The Psychic
by Idream3223
Summary: Before he found the telepath in Dead Until Dark, Eric Northman had a psychic, and it was incredible. Even the psychic thought so, for a while. This is her story, told from her perspective. Before The Great Revelation. Eric Northman/-OC-Jane Black/Prequel to Canon SVM Series.
1. Truths and Traps

**The Psychic- Truths and Traps**

**_Shreveport 1988_**

Was the music always playing or did it only start when I woke up? Variations on a tree in the forest, I know, but physics apply to the tree and I am not sure they do to the things that I could hear and see when I woke up from the accident. I hit my head, hard. Realigned my perception.

I had always been odd, but after I woke up it went to a whole new level.

It was fate. It was stupidity. Perhaps they are the same and we haven't been smart enough to figure that out collectively yet.

I spun my truck out on wet pavement on a hot summer day, rolling it one and half times the state trooper told me at the hospital while I rained shards of safety glass on the floor like snowflakes on a cold winter night. It was all surreal. It continued to be so all the way home, into the shower and then into the bed, where Death found me. I was just about to doze off when I felt the side of the bed go down, like someone was climbing in, which was odd, since I lived alone.

It was when the bony arms wrapped themselves around me and started preventing me from breathing that distant became too close. I sat up, wide awake but there was only me. I told myself the things we all do, when confronted by something that couldn't possibly be happening. I_t's not real. You're freaked from the accident. It's just nerves._

Laying back down I was dozing off when it happened again.

When I sat up that again, terrified, I knew there would be no more sleep for me that night, not in an apartment where Death lurked.

I went out, and walked the streets of Shreveport. I saw people around me, doing what people do, walking, talking, spending time, wasting time. I was no different, except that more clearly than ever I felt different. Separate and disparate, and all the time I heard the music playing, connecting even the strangers together in my mind.

It was in this state of amazement and wonder that I entered Wonderland, a bar on the corner of 3rd and 2nd. I had never been there before, and as I made my way to the bar to order a drink, the music inside the bar took a backseat the music I could hear around me since I woke up. George Michael's _Father Figure_ was playing and the people on the dance floor were slow dancing, dry humping, kissing like they were racing to a finish line that would be in hall at the back of the bar or in their homes when they left for the night.

I was invisible, which on some level was what I wanted. Death couldn't find me if I was invisible.

I took a seat at the bar and ordered a shot of tequila. I was three shots in when I saw him, on the other side of bar, leaning there, looking at nothing but I could tell he was listening. Did he hear the music I wondered? Part of me noticed how beautiful he was, and then immediately reassured myself that he would never notice an overweight girl of twenty-three with stitches in her face. I wasn't the kind of girl who got noticed in a positive way. I was used to that.

No one could find me if I was invisible.

On my fourth shot I saw a beautiful young woman approach him and ask for a dance. He turned to face her, and the when the light hit him full on as he stood I gasped, but the music covered my awe. I watched him move the floor with her, and for a moment I knew the envy that could damn a soul to hell. I ordered another drink and continued to watch. The intensity of my gaze took my mind away and I could see that when they were done dancing he was going to take her to his office. There he was going to kiss her, and then look deeply into her eyes and tell her that she would only remember the fantastic fuck, and then leave his club and never return.

I saw his fangs then, and how he used them on her neck and I felt my body respond, wanting more than ever to be her.

_My name is Jane,_ I thought, _and if I had known that Death was six foot four with blond hair and crystal blue eyes I would have stayed home and let him hold me close._

I blinked then and saw that they were still dancing. Then just as I had imagined, he took her hand and led her to a door behind the bar. The other people in the club went into slow motion as I watched him lead her. Just as they entered the door he turned back and looked me right in the eye. He lingered a moment, and then he smiled, as if he could read my mind. I looked back as if I wanted him to do just that.

Then he was gone.

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I woke up the next morning not remembering how I got home. My head hurt from the accident, from the tequila, from the images that rushed into me. I saw myself back at Wonderland and this time he was leaning beside me on the bar. I knew I was going to speak to him, but before I could see what I was supposed to say I was back in my apartment with only my pounding head.

I went back to sleep.

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It was dark when I awoke and I didn't even think about it as I dressed. I knew where I was going. I knew what I needed to do like someone had told me. Usually, I wanted to be invisible, but tonight I wanted to be like him. I wanted to be seen and recognized as different, like I knew him to be. I didn't have fangs, but I had claws and I knew how to use them. Life made sure of that even before the accident.

I sat at the bar again, and waited. I could almost feel him approach and when he leaned on the bar next to me, as I had seen in my vision that morning, again I knew I was going to speak.

"I know what you do, what you are," I said quietly, not looking at him. In my mind as the words left my lips I saw him turn to me and ask what I meant, and at the same time I saw him killing me in the office he had used for his companion last night. As he turned to me, a half smile on his lips and eye brow up in askance, I wondered if that outcome was inevitable now that I had started down the path.

"Pardon me?" he said, his voice sending shivers down my spine.

"Vampire." He laughed, but it wasn't because he thought I was funny. _How odd_, I thought,_ most people did find me funny, or so they said._

"What does that mean?" he asked as though humoring a child, looking into my eyes. The words that came were not my own but I felt the truth of them and the impact as the landed on the man before me.

"Loneliness. Rage. Boredom. Even the most fantastic things are mundane to you now with all your years. You long for the world to show you something new, something different. You long to be seen, truly seen for more than how you look, and more than what you are, but you dare not give anyone the chance. Too many enemies, and too much perceived weakness. You carry a world that you hold no passion for on your back and you can't put it down." He blinked. When he looked at me again, and I felt naked, but not afraid.

In my mind I saw him taking me to his office, where he questioned me as he stared deep into my eyes, asking if I knew other vampires, and why I was in his bar.

In my mind I saw him walk away and never look back.

I knew that if he walked away I would never see him again.

I knew that even if I died after all that was not what I wanted.

"Do creatures such as you hear the music?" I asked, seeking kindred, seeking common ground, seeking to make him stay and talk to me.

"Music?" he asked, moving closer to me, looking down into my blue eyes with his and I sensed we were on the edge of something big, dark and mysterious. I nodded, never breaking his gaze.

"There is music playing all around us, the rhythms that all creatures make. Tension and release, tambour and pitch. You make a truly marvelous sound in my brain…Eric." I pulled his name from the music and when I spoke it, it felt as though I had said it a thousand times over thousands of nights.

I knew him. Would he know me?

"You want to take me to the office now and make me tell you my secrets." Again, he blinked.

"Yes," came his ragged confession.

"You can do that, but it hasn't gotten you what you want so far, what makes you think it will get you what you want now? I am not like the others. Do something different with me."

"You know what happens in the office?" he asked me, still gazing into my eyes, digging into my brain looking for truths and traps.

"Yes."

"And you don't want that? You don't want me to touch you? Take you?" He leaned closer with each question until he was poised to kiss me as he had the girl from last night. The music he made in my head became chaotic and uneven, like the song he made was playing on the wrong key.

"It's not what _you_ want," I told him. He sat back a little and looked at me anew. "I will give you what you need, and I will not ask for what you don't want to give. Take me someplace different and I will trust you to do with me what you will. I ask only that you remember that for this night this is about what you want."

"And if I want to kill you?" he asked, his tone menacing as he glared at me, angry that I had upset his balanced boring world with my statements.

"I will be surprised. You wanted something different. Seems wasteful to throw away a wish granted."

"You think I wished for you?" he asked sounding contemptuous and amused at the same time.

"Yes, but I don't think you realized it at the time." He stared at me long and hard then, and as I waited for my fate to be decided, and perhaps his too, I considered how this entire conversation was me, but not me. I kept seeing things, I kept hearing things, I kept saying things. He may not have known he wished for me, but I had not known what I was going to say.

I was saying my lines.

I had no idea who wrote them.

Of course, now my baggage and lack of self-confidence kicked in. _Someone like him will never want someone like me, not really. I am ugly and fat and he is beautiful and so far above me that I can only imagine who he might be._ The internal lashing went on and on in the space of the actual seconds it took him to consider my request, my command. I was preparing myself for him to walk away, when he held out his hand to me and starting leading me to the exit.

As I held his cold hand I caught flashes of possibilities that told me he was far from making up his mind on what to do with me.

He drained me and burned my corpse.

He broke my neck and left my body in the bayou.

He hypnotized me and questioned me on who I was and what I wanted from him.

He took me to his house and we talked for hours.

I had no idea which one was going to be the reality until he pulled into the drive way of an average looking brick home. The music told me he didn't actually live here, this was a safe house.

"Why do you need a safe house, Eric? Who wants to hurt you?" The question was out before I thought. His head flipped to look at me as he removed the keys from the ignition. Faster than I could see he moved, placing his face in front of mine, dropping his fangs down as he glared at me.

"What are you?" he demanded, taking a deep breath, sniffing me.

"You tell me, it's only fair. Tell me, as I did you." I had seen his fangs and knew what he was, I wasn't backing down.

"You have recently been injured." He sniffed again. "You live alone. You were in my club last night watching me. You know too much about me. You are in danger because of what you know." This last was a threat. I was still seeing possible outcomes for this meeting in my head, changing as fast as his thoughts were moving, making me dizzy. "You are not afraid."

"No."

"Are you a witch?"

"I don't think so. Are they born or do you mean the ones who light candles and proclaim themselves to be a servant to the goddess?"

"Either? Both?" He was still staring and baring his fangs, perhaps insulted that I had not cowered from him. "Are you a telepath?" he asked, his voice hopeful. Again the words that came from my lips were not my own.

"She is yet to come. You will know when you see her, she will be your salvation and your damnation. My time is now, and you are here with me for things that you need."

"What are you?" he asked again.

"I'm a psychic," I told him and myself at the same time.

It was a revelation for us both.


	2. I Am A Vampire

**The Psychic- I Am A Vampire**

"A psychic?" he was still right in my face and the music of the universe was still playing, making my tongue dance to its tune. I wondered what else I might learn as I labeled him priest and confessed these truths that must be spoken to be heard. Part of me splintered away and watched me, watching him, watching me.

_You should be afraid,_ the other me said. _You have no idea what is happening and all you can see is the thousand ways he longs to end you. You should run._

Instead, I laughed. Out loud. For a long time. His eyebrow went up again, but he didn't pull back from the face of what could only be called madness. Finally, I told him, "If you want me to stop laughing you should stop thinking of killing me."

"You find death funny?" His tone was hot wet velvet on my shattered psyche and I wanted more than anything to kiss him. Partly because I wanted to kiss him and partly because some truths I did not want to speak. Some truths I did not want to hear.

"A friend of mine told me a joke, a story, once. I have not been able to stop thinking of it since I saw you last night."

"Tell me."

"A man was walking down the street and he saw Death coming toward him. He knew that it was coming for him so he turned and ran home, packed a bag and left town. As he was checking into a hotel three towns away he met Death in the lobby and stopped, frozen in his tracks. Death looked at him and smiled. Looking at the man he told him that when he had seen him earlier he had been confused because it wasn't time to for them to meet yet. They were supposed to meet here in this hotel lobby."

"Meaning?" he prompted. I licked my lips and his glance flicked down to follow the motion of my tongue.

"I was running from Death when I walked into your bar. I came to Wonderland to hide from the creature who owns it." His gaze locked with mine again.

"You better come inside and tell me from the beginning."

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He sat me on his perfectly ordinary sofa, in his perfectly ordinary house and waited for me to connect the dots. I wondered what I should tell him. In fairness, since I could take anything I wanted from him, I should be as open as he was to me.

I wasn't interested in being fair.

"Tell where you want to begin," I said. He hesitated a moment, sensing that I wanted him to set the rules so that I was not obligated to give him more than he asked. He looked at me with recognition and some admiration.

I had found kindred after all.

"Tell me how you came to Wonderland."

"I came down the rabbit hole, via a car accident yesterday afternoon. I rolled my truck on a back road outside of town. Bald tires on hot wet pavement. I took a turn too fast and the back end slid around and all I saw was the green of the embankment that I was headed for fill the windshield and the world went into slow motion. I heard a voice, a male voice tell me with absolute calm and certainty that I would be all right, and then everything went black. I woke to see feet running by my head and hearing voices call out speculating that I was dead. I was upside down hanging by my seat belt.

"When I got home, I washed off the glass and went to bed. Something I couldn't see but could only feel climbed in with me and wrapped its bony arms around me, squeezing me so tight I couldn't breathe. I got up and ran. I ran from Death. I found Death in Wonderland."

I stopped then, he knew the rest, he had been there. He looked at me, trying to stare the truth from me.

"You hit your head in the accident," he said, not asking because you didn't need supernatural senses to see the stitches that ran up into my brown hair line. "Were you psychic before you hit your head?" His hand ghosted up to my face, a long sensuous finger tracing the pattern of the stitches so lightly that if I had not seen it, I would not have felt it.

"Yes, but it wasn't as clear. I had impressions, and feelings of things and people before."

"And now?"

"Now I HEAR the music, now I SEE the possible outcomes all around me, all the time." His hand came down to cup my face and I could see he was thinking how marvelous it would be to cut out my wondrous brain and use it for himself. I laughed, again. "You're thinking of killing me again. You should decide to do it, or not and quit being a pussy about it."

He growled then, causing me to laugh harder. He grabbed my shoulders and bore me down to the sofa, the weight of him pinning me there. I was transfixed wondering what was next.

I saw him drain all my blood.

I saw him strangle me.

I saw him kiss me, and this time the music he made in my mind remained harmonious and clear.

He really wanted to kiss me.

I really wanted him to kiss me.

"I will enjoy it if you do, and so will you," I whispered to him. His gaze locked with mine again and he smiled slightly.

"Who are you?" he asked, not moving, not deciding and not kissing me.

"I am Jane Black, and I would like a drink. Scotch if you have it. In return I will give you some B negative, if you like."

"I think I will take mine first," he said softly leaning down, and then all the possible threads solidified into one. I smiled and turned my head to the side.

You can see a thing, and think you know it. You can imagine a thing and think it holds no surprises. I had fallen into that with him already. He had no secrets and so I thought I knew him.

It wasn't until I felt his bite that I realized it's not the secrets themselves but the formations, the changes they create in the basic clay of a person that defines who they are. What I had seen amounted to snap shots in his photo album with no context and no meaning to me. I hadn't been there. At least not until he bit me and then the context for some of them slipped into place.

He had been alone for a very long time. Without his maker. Without his children. Without himself. His snap shots were almost as meaningless to him as they were to me but he felt me provide context to some of them as he drank me and the feeling was as overwhelming for him as it was for me.

I saw him then, alive and in the sun riding a beautiful stallion at a gallop across a field, laughing as the wind swept his long blond hair back. I felt him, the exhilaration, the joy of the moment and I heard the music that accompanied his emotions and actions. In that moment he had been at one with all the universe around him, in harmony and had felt such certainty for who he was, and what he was supposed to do that it brought tears to my eyes.

He pulled back from my neck, his lips bloody and his eyes almost afraid. "When I taste you, I can hear it, too," he said.

"The music?"

"Yes, it is quite…beautiful." My hand came up to his face now and I sought to reassure him that what he had heard was not only real but always present, at least for me.

"It was a beautiful memory."

"I had forgotten that day."

"And now you have it back." There were more words that weren't mine that wanted to tumble out but I was waiting for him to process. I was waiting for him to ask.

"How?" he finally said, licking me from his lips.

"Because it's what you needed." I did not understand what I said, but he did. He closed his eyes a moment and sat back from be, letting me sit up again. After a moment he got me my scotch and sat back down marshalling his questions and demands he wanted to make of me.

I was seconds ahead of him.

He wanted to ask me what I meant that this was what he needed, but knew I would tell him that I just did.

He wanted to drink more of me, all of me, but knew no answers would come from that.

He wanted to glamour me into forgetting.

He caught my gaze and tried the last option. I could feel him skittering around the edges of my mind and for a moment I wanted to let him in. I wanted him to take it all from me, because even now, this early, I knew that lifting this was going to get hard. At the same time I knew that this man I had mentally claimed as priest and confessor could not offer me the peace of a mind wipe.

Whoever was running this show was not going to let me off that easy.

They weren't going to let him off that easy.

"It won't work," I told him as he tried his best to capture my mind and take away my memories of him, this conversation, this night.

"Why?"

"It would be too easy," I shrugged and took a belt of my drink. He sighed then, something that I did not expect and settled back next to me, his thoughts turning again to my demise. When I started giggling his thoughts redirected themselves into how he could turn this to his advantage.

I saw him take me to meetings with other vampires to predict outcomes.

I saw him take me to Wonderland to predict outcomes and advance his business.

I saw him giving me the fuck of my life to claim me as his and use me in any way he saw fit.

I saw him let me be his friend and him trusting me.

The last possibility faded as soon as it was born, but I felt we would come back to that one. Perhaps after the others had been tried, but coming back to it none the less. I was too intriguing to end. At least for the foreseeable future. I saw his thoughts shift again.

"Most women become aroused when I bite them." A question without actually asking. He was boring me now. He should have known better. I waited.

"Why didn't you?"

"I told you I was different."

"But what does that mean?" My turn to sigh.

"It means, I think that in order to see the world around you with different eyes, something has to shake your perception, and leave you unsettled. Most people just expect things to be certain ways and so they pass through life assuming they are and never really looking. If something has left you unsettled then you look because you are trying to be ahead of the differences, to see them, anticipate them, plan for them, avoid them if you can. Nothing is taken for granted by an unsettled mind."

"You would make an excellent vampire," he told me, smiling slightly. I mirrored his smile.

"I already am a vampire." The eyebrow again. "In seeing what is coming I can control it to some degree. I can feed, for lack of a better term."

"Feed how?"

"I can feed the monster that wants love by seeing that people around me are exuding the emotion, feel it with them, leech it from them. I can feed the monster in me with pain by subverting a destiny and placing a soul in pain. Not all vampires drink blood, but we all drink something. In some ways we all feed off each other. I am simply more aware and better at it than most."

"And do you prefer love or pain when you drink, Jane?" It was the first time he had said my name and I shivered a little as I heard it, felt it on my skin and saw the tones of it spin up and join the music around us. In that moment I knew I had been named such just so he could say it. So I could feel it when he did. I followed the echoes for a moment through the air and time around us.

"Depends on my mood."

"And what are you in the mood for now?" I stood and held out my hand.

"Come on, Eric. Let's go see a show."

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I took him to a club called Chauncey's where a band called Three Deep was playing. They were a popular local band and had quite a dedicated following. I had caught their show several times and knew who to expect there as a regular in addition to the people who just happened to show up. We took a table in the back, in the dark, and I pulled my chair close to his so that we could whisper.

The band was well into their performance. I started there.

"Look at them," I said in his ear. "The passion they feel when they play, the energy they are putting into their performance flows out onto the crowd. The crowd is feeding on their energy, transforming it into their moves on the dance floor, or when they sway in their seats. It flows around us. Open you mind. Open your heart and feel the energy in the beat of the drums. In the strings of the guitar. In the sounds coming from the singer."

I watched him look now, seeing something that had always been there, but that he had never seen before. After a few moments I felt him relax against me, and heard him almost purr as it washed over him. I whispered again. "Look, there, on the floor." There was an old woman twirling her skirt in her hands as she moved, almost conjuring an image of a forest sprite dancing in a moonlit glen. Her eyes were closed and the smile on her face was truly beautiful. "She's feeding," I told him. I saw him watch her, and moment later I heard his fangs slip down. I leaned closer.

"See it through me," I whispered and pulled his face down to my neck again, opening myself to the energy in the room and channeling it to him to experience through my blood. He moaned as he took a mouthful of the power in the room, as he took a mouthful of me. I felt him shudder in pleasure as he pulled back, licking his lips and looking at me with something near affection.

Slowly, I stood and held out my hand. He rose and placed his hand in mine and we moved to the floor, next to the old woman who was still dancing with her eyes closed, in a world of her own.

He pulled me close to him and l let my own eyes drift closed as we moved to the music together, in world of our own as well.


	3. Ain't That A Bitch?

_A/N- First, a thank you to my readers for taking the time to check out this new story. I welcome you all. I will say again though, this is an Eric story, not an Eric and Sookie story. I have many of those and I welcome you to read them all with open arms and understand that you may not be interested in a story that has no Sookie. If this is not for you, I respect that, but will tell you honestly now, she is not part of this. She has already made the only cameo you will see in this story in the first chapter._

"Are you a telepath?" he asked, his voice hopeful. Again the words that came from my lips were not my own.

"She is yet to come. You will know when you see her, she will be your salvation and your damnation. My time is now, and you are here with me for things that you need."

_If you need more of them, you won't find it here, but you may find other things if you venture on. I leave the choice to you, dear reader and thank you as always for your time and support._

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**The Psychic- Ain't That A Bitch?**

I kept my eyes closed. I kept his questions at bay. I kept my answers to myself and tried to find the threads of peace in that moment that I was in his arms swaying to the music Nothing could touch me in his arms, nothing could hurt me but him.

Nothing could hurt me but me.

Not even a thousand year old Viking vampire could save Jane Black from herself.

I hoped he would try anyway.

Or maybe I hoped he would stop being a pussy and get around to killing me in one of the dozens of ways his marvelous mind had considered.

I knew he was going to ask. I had diverted him from the obvious question earlier by taking him to hunt. By taking him to feed as I did, with me and on me. He had allowed me to distract him, but he had literally nothing but time.

There was nowhere I could hide if he chose to ask what he was about to ask.

"What has left your mind unsettled, Jane?" he whispered in my ear, leaning down with his lips from six foot four to my five foot eight inch ear, lowering the hammer on my soul and leaving me to decide just how much I didn't care about being fair. I considered and did not answer as we moved. Finally, I told him the truth of my soul.

"I would rather you kill me than ask this."

"I will not make it easier on you than you have on me. Now as you say, stop being a pussy and tell me what unsettled you? What happened that opened your mind to see these things around you?"

The band picked up then, a new faster song. Perhaps a bell that could save me, but he refused to let it go. He led me from Chauncey's and back to his Corvette, not waiting for me to answer before he started the car. Before he started driving fast. I saw it then, he was headed to where I had totaled my truck the day before. In my mind I saw him sniff the air, saw him salivate at the smell of my blood that had saturated small patches of the highway that had nearly taken my life.

There were no alternate threads, no questions as to what he might do. He had one thing on his mind. He wanted to even the playing field. He wanted me to give in balance to what I had taken and he would not back down from that.

We were standing in front the embankment that I had driven into staring at the naked dirt when he turned to me again and said the last thing that even I, with all my insight, could have expected.

"You'll be all right."

FUCK! That was the voice I had heard yesterday. It wasn't in the moment, it had been a moment yet to come. A moment that had just come and I felt like I had hanging upside down watching the feet run by my face.

My world, the world where I knew everything and was surprised by nothing, shattered in front of me and for the first time since the accident that had taken my beloved truck and nearly taken my life I cried. Silent tears, shuddering breaths. Growing in volume until I screamed like my soul was tearing right in two and I fell to my knees beside the road.

He stood there watching me fall apart and thought of consoling me. He did not. He let me sob it out and stood there with his hands in his pockets, looking slightly uncomfortable until I was done and forced myself to stand.

"What has unsettled you, Jane?" Tenacious persistent bastard.

I looked at him then, seeing him perhaps for the first time. His form was perfect. Perfect muscles, perfect face, perfect blond hair, perfect blue eyes. Perfection in life. Perfection in death. Perfection for all of eternity. But I had seen beneath the surface of that perfection and what I had found was…more perfection. He was a perfect stone cold killing machine. He was soft and alive in the most perfect way that I had ever seen a being be.

He was asking me, imperfect twenty-three year old, imperfect over weight, imperfect soul scarred, imperfect brown haired, imperfect blue eyed, imperfect fucked up Jane Black what had unsettled her.

He asked not because he cared, not that he didn't, in his own way. He asked mostly because he wanted to know how I came to be who and what I was standing before him. He asked because he wanted me to give as much as I had taken from him. He had to ask. I had not.

Faced with all that perfection in shades, in shards I found my voice but before I could speak I heard another.

_This is how you fall._

I closed my eyes, and felt peace at the knowledge that I would be moving, even if it was only to fall. I would break out, break on, rushing at his fangs, his immortality, his perfect smile and surrender myself to them, to him.

I would no longer be deadlocked and alone.

_This is how you fall._

_Let it be so then. _ I answered to any and all, to the universe at large.

Taking a deep breath, I fell forward and started to speak.

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I told him that when I was nine my father came into the bathroom while I was bathing. I told him of the look in his eyes that made me feel cold and dead inside even though I did not understand what it meant or why he would stand over me and watch as I bathed.

I told him that my parents split soon after and that the last words my father said to me were, "You'll be whore just like your mother," and that I couldn't help but see it was driven from a place of resentment. He resented that someone else would take what he had wanted for himself.

I told him that I was sure my father would still have thought me whore even if he had been my maker.

I told him of my mother's boyfriend when I was thirteen who did not stop, and assumed that role with relish.

I told him of telling my mother and being slapped and called a liar. "You want to take everything I have!" she had screamed at me, as she left me in that grabbing, scratching, pounding hell for another three years until he finally left me alone, and left her for someone else.

I told him that while what I wanted more than anything else on the face of this earth was the full blown, stupid, mad, total happy ending love story that I hid from it in food, in alcohol and drugs, hiding myself from those who might find me attractive, deliberately, refusing to reconcile the woman who wanted love with the woman who buried herself in a size sixteen body and hid from the very thing she claimed to want.

I told him that I hid myself from myself.

I told him how, while I did these things, I watched. I waited. Sure that anyone who wanted anything to do with me only wanted things from me. Only wanted to find a way to hurt me again.

I told him my worst secret of all.

I told him that I wanted them to hurt me.

I told him because it was true.

I told him because I felt like I deserved to be hurt.

He was silent on the side of the road for several minutes and then he took his hands out of his pockets and ran his hand through his long blond hair, sweeping it back from his head.

"You trust me then?" he asked.

"Not for a second." he smiled then.

"Smart girl. Why tell me then?" I shrugged.

"You asked."

"That's not why. I won't let you hide from me. The rest I can't do anything about, that's all on you to change, but I won't let you hide from me."

"What difference does it make either way?" I asked.

"The biggest difference. Now tell me why, Jane." My eyes drifted closed as he said my name. It was still the most perfect thing I had ever heard or HEARD with my new ears.

"Say it again," I whispered, keeping my eyes closed.

"Jane," he repeated and my stupid little love dreaming heart did a double beat. He had known what I meant and I hadn't needed to explain. I was starting to feel so at home here, in the dark with this creature of perfection.

_This is how you fall._

_Yes! YES!_ I screamed back in my mind at the voice. _FUCK YOU! YES! THIS IS HOW I FALL! I DON'T CARE!_

"Because I know that you will understand," I said out loud.

"I do," he confirmed, still not moving closer, or away.

"Because you will be my priest…my confessor…my penance…my forgiveness."

"I can't forgive you, Jane. Only you can do that." I nodded eyes still closed hearing his voice echo in my mind and ears.

"I think you can show me the path, Eric, even if I have to be the one to walk it."

"And this is what you want?" he was closer to me now.

"Yes, but I don't know how to want it. I don't know how to want anything."

"Oh, I think you know how to want, Jane." I felt his hand on my face again and keeping my eyes closed pretending I was alone and opening myself up further.

"Yes, you're right. I know how to want. I don't know how to let myself have what I want."

"Yes, that is the truth." His thumb rubbed my cheek then and I made myself keep my eyes closed. I made myself keep my mind closed. I didn't want to see what came next because I would move and react and interrupt and subvert and change and run, run as fast as I could saying stupid shit and doing stupid things that I believed saved me from being hurt. That really only damned from getting what I wanted.

And that was right. That was okay. Because I didn't deserve to get it.

I had already seen enough to push back. I could tell him that I knew he only wanted to use me and pretend that I wasn't doing the same with him, as though I were better than him.

I could lie to myself. I was really fucking good at that.

I did not want to push back. Push away. Run away. But I didn't know how to open my eyes and stay now that I was naked before him. So naked, never this naked and all my clothes were still on, standing on the side of a back road outside of Shreveport I had confessed truths that belonged in sacred confessional. Not even God had gotten me to confess the way Eric had.

"What I have to offer means nothing to me, Eric." I meant my gift, my visions, my knowledge. I could not offer my body to him. Even as distorted as I had made it to hide it and protect it, it meant more to me anything else. I could not offer it. "What you have to offer me, Eric, means nothing to you." I meant his body then, pleasure was so commonplace to him that he gave himself because it didn't matter, keeping all the parts that did safe and tucked away, never seen and never touched.

Again, he understood with no explanation needed. He chuckled and I felt his hand fall away from me.

"So here we are. You want me to seduce you and convince you to give me the one thing you don't know how to offer using the one thing that means nothing to me to get what means nothing to you. And all this will cost me are the things that mean everything to me."

I opened my eyes and looked at him there in the dark safety of the night in this place of near death and possible rebirth and said the only thing I could.

"Ain't that a bitch?"


	4. Here Kitty, Kitty

**The Psychic- Here Kitty, Kitty**

He laughed at me then. Loudly and genuinely amused at my bullshit sense of humor in this unimaginable situation that we found ourselves in.

"Yes, I agree. It's a bitch." He stopped then and I looked at him, purposefully not looking for what was next, and secretly hoping that he would end me there and all this would be over. I should have known better. Nothing about this was going to be easy. It was too big to be easy. "If you were a car, Jane, what car would you be?" My turn to laugh.

What a perfectly fucked up question for a perfectly fucked up situation. Who was the psychic, I wondered?

"1965 Corvette convertible, tuxedo black."

"They made less than two thousand of those," he said knowingly. Of course he knew, he was perfect after all. "And 1965 because that was the year you were born as well?" I didn't need to answer him. He was just that fucking good. "Why tuxedo black?"

"It's slimming." He laughed at me again and nodded as though he had known that answer, too.

"And if you were this car, Jane, what would you do?"

"Drive and never stop. Drive like the fucking wind until I ran out of road, out of time, out of space. Nothing would ever stop me again and I would laugh and rev my engine as the world burnt to cinder around me." His eyes drifted closed slightly and I wondered if he was seeing me fly down the highway eating miles like I would never be full.

"That would be something to see, Jane." He purred me that time and despite my baggage, hang ups and issues I felt myself responding. This man, this creature did not play fair.

I fucking loved it!

But I could not show it.

"Stop saying me like that, Eric." This time I purred him, wanting to show him what it sounded like. And as though I had said here kitty, kitty he stepped closer, eyes still closed seeing whatever danced on the back of his eye lids and through his mind.

"Like what, Jane?" Fucking bastard, but I wanted to smile even as I called him names in the caves of my mind.

"Like I was an ice cream cone on a hot summer day and you wanted to lick me from top to bottom, Eric," I said, making him a double scoop with my tone and words as well. I could be sadistic, too. Years of practice. His eyes popped open then and a smile flirted with his lips.

"I've never had ice cream, Jane." Fucking son of a bitch, I will not shiver again. I won't!

I did anyway.

"You've never had 'Jane' either, vampire. But your tone tells me you think you would like it." He licked his lips.

"I like what I have had so far." Time to shift this. I made everyone else uncomfortable, not the other way around. Best defense and all that jazz.

"So, what now, Eric?" I crossed my arms over my chest, protecting me from more of his purring and more of my own salivating at the ideas that he was placing in my mind. I didn't do things like this. I never wanted to do things like this.

The fact that I wanted to now was fucking with my head. Take me, I thought. If you just take me then I can close down and you will lose. I dropped my arms and dared him with a smile. Come on, show me that you are just…like…everyone…else. SHOW ME! I silently demanded and waited to be proven right, praying the whole time that he would be different. Praying the whole time I would be wrong.

"Come," he said and started for the car. I was…curious and disappointed. I thought that was going to be something. I held back, being a bitch, to see what he would do. He didn't stop or slow. He moved to the car and started the engine. The message clear. Get in or walk home.

God help me, I was turned on even more. Being in control was necessary for me to function, but controlling everything was so totally fucking exhausting. This felt out of control. This felt exhilarating. This felt different.

I got in the car.

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When we started to move he turned up the stereo. Whitesnake's _Is This Love_ filled the car and my head with it's soothing tones. He buried his foot in the floor and I felt the car respond to his expert knowing touch. I never wanted to be a corvette more in my life. He shifted gears smoothly and with a force that had me wondering if that was how he fucked. Confident, powerful, perfect. Again, he read my mind.

"A '65 'Vette should be driven by a master," he purred at them as he shifted again, making the engine purr, which covered the same reaction he got from me. "Only touched by a knowing hand, who can take her to her fullest potential. Someone to stretch her out, make her sing and dance with the slightest touch." Still closed off I blame the White Snake for what came out of my mouth.

"And you think you are the master to make a '65 'Vette come when you call?" He chuckled then.

"Oh, yes. I have "driven" them all. I know all the tricks to get the performance everyone wants." Fucking Whitesnake. Is this love?

It just might fucking be.

What the hell was I gonna do with that?

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He dropped me at my front door an hour before sunrise. I sat there, not wanting to stay but unable to get out. I wasn't done with him yet. I didn't know how to tell him that and still have any control left at all. I opened my mind for the first time since we had been at the sight of the accident.

I saw him kiss me.

I saw him drive away and never look back.

I saw him coming back to get me the next night.

The music around us was chaotic while he played the possibilities in his mind and as I heard it realign itself into a melodious tune I closed my mind and waited. I wanted to be surprised.

"Are you free tonight, Jane?" he asked, looking ahead and not at me.

"In as much as any of us are ever free, yes, Eric, I am free tonight." He nodded.

"Meet me here at nine." No kiss then. I told myself I was not disappointed. I wanted him to be different. No kiss was different. No attempt to force himself on me was different.

Different was good, right? I sighed, out loud, I realized as it escaped me. He didn't turn to me, but I saw him smile.

"See you then." I got out and walked away. I was sure in that moment that I was never going to see him again, and that it would be my choice, not his.

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Nine came and went and I was sitting in my apartment drinking tequila on my sofa when I saw him outside the window. My living room faced the building next to me. I had a fabulous view of a solid brick wall. Well I _had_ a fabulous view of a brick wall. Now, I had fabulous view of the most handsome man I had ever seen hovering outside my living room window.

He could fly? Fucking figures. He is perfect after all. Perfectly fucking annoying to not just drive away when I wasn't there. Perfectly fucking perfect when he did not give up.

I hadn't wanted him to give him up.

I just couldn't let it be that easy.

"Invite me in, Jane." I sat there and looked at him, assessing the risk he was taking by flying around out there. Anyone could see him. Why would he risk that for me?

"Show off," I said, sounding angry when really I was excited and impressed and more than a little moved that he would take a chance like just to find a stubborn fat girl. Maybe he was different. I moved to open the window and pop off the screen. "Come in, Mr. Door Too Good For You," I said watching him float in. I felt hot all over and told myself it was the tequila.

It was mostly true.

He looked around and then went to the walls to admire the photographs and paintings I had hung. He stopped in front of the sunrise I had taken at the beach the year before. It captured the sun just as it broke the horizon and had a seagull in the top left hand corner. The ocean was black and the sky on fire. It captivated him.

"Yours?" he asked softly.

"Yes." He moved on to the water colors that I had done, mostly birds and wildlife, some flowers, all captured the majesty of a sunny day. He stared again for a long time.

"You are very good," he finally said, turning to face me. I shrugged and sat back down. "Why did you stand me up?"

"I wanted to see if you would come find me," I told him, taking another drink.

"Truth, Jane." My fucking name again. I opened my mind.

He came at me, pinning to the sofa and drinking me again.

He stood there and waited for me to answer him.

He turned and walked out the door.

"Will you get drunk if you taste me when I am intoxicated?"

"Only if you are very, very intoxicated."

"Oh," I said and took another slug.

"Truth, Jane." I took another drink and stood, moving toward my stereo. I looked through my 45's and found what I needed. Placing it on the turn table and putting the needle on the record Laura Branigan filled my small apartment singing about _Self Control_. I sang with the record and danced slowly toward him.

"You take my self, you take my self-control," I sang to him. Wondering if he would get it. He watched and listened until the song was over before he spoke.

"I prefer the Janet Jackson version of Control," was all he said. He didn't ask again. Message received and volley back to me.

"And if you're nasty, shall I insist that you call me Ms. Black?"

"Wait until I get nasty and then let your conscience be your guide." I stood there. Even a psychic could be caught without a comeback in the presence of Eric Fucking Northman. "Get your shoes, I want to show you something." I complied, after all, he had won that round.

He drove me to a warehouse on the far side of town. Getting out he waited for me to catch up before he went inside. When the lights came on I saw that this was where he kept his cars. He actually had a fucking Delorean. I guess he needed it in case he needed to get back in time for something. I giggled. I blamed the tequila, which by now had me numb and pleasantly loose. Everything felt all right to me at this moment.

In the corner was a covered car. He moved to that and waited for me to come over as well. He turned to me and smiled just a little before he ripped the cover off a '65 Corvette convertible. It was rusted out in places, and in need of repair and restoration. "It doesn't run right now," he said moving around the car the pop the hood. The motor was in serious need of attention as was the body of the car itself. He opened the driver's door and gestured in a sweeping motion for me to get behind the wheel.

My heart had stopped when the cover came off. I had no words. I climbed in and wrapped my hands around the steering wheel and felt the world right itself for the first time since…I was nine maybe.

"It needs some work," he said leaning down over me, looking at the interior with a critical eye. "A good paint job."

"Paint?" I echoed, looking up at him with dreamy eyes.

"Tuxedo black," he said, looking down at me with a devilish smile.

"Black?" I echoed.

"Yes," he nodded. "It's slimming, I hear."

Somewhere in my mind Whitesnake was asking that fucking question again, and I was pretty sure I knew the answer.

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_A/N- The Big Bang has not been abandoned, it is only on hiatus. I am still trying to figure out what happens next. Thanks for reading! :)_


	5. The Wild Card

**The Psychic- The Wild Card**

My brain locked as I looked at him. There was so much that I wanted to say and do in that moment, but there were only certain things I _could_ do. Only certain things I would_ let_ myself do.

It was unfair to me.

It was unfair to him.

My head was still warm and slidy with the tequila that greased my gears enough to let me get here but I was not sure it would be enough to free me from the shackles that I wore. I stared into his perfect blue eyes and took a deep breath.

So…much…want.

My world was out of kilter and if I could hear the music that I made I would hear the banging of drums, like the knocking on the doors that compartmentalized my broken self. I could not hear myself though, not when I wanted to, not when I needed to. I could see myself interact with others and what their reactions would be, but not my own.

I was a blank slate at all times. I was the variable that could not be accounted for. I was the wild card.

I let myself imagine what I wanted.

I wanted to swap places with him, putting him in the driver's seat and then me climbing in with him, wrapping my legs around him and kissing that long elegant beautiful neck until all he could do was say me like I was divine. I wanted to undo those fucking black jeans and touch him, making his tone go deeper and his body respond to my touch.

I had never wanted a man like this.

I didn't know that I could feel that. That the option had been left to me to feel those things. Want those things.

In my mind I saw him respond to my aggressive and angry touch, yielding to me as I caressed him, accepting my offer of blood and sex in return for this perfect gift.

It was there that I crashed into the wall.

To pay him with sex would make me…what?

Flashes of my mother's boyfriend promising me gifts in return for what he took from me. Art supplies, cameras, cars. CARS.

My stomach followed my brain and locked. I ran from the car, from the building, from the man inside and made it out to the corner before my heaving stomach emptied itself of Cuervo. What a waste, I thought as I puked up my vulnerability to his gesture. My anger at what had been done to me. My inability to do what I wanted to do.

Tears came next, because I was not able to see a way to separate my past from my present and take action that would put me in control of this joke I called my life. I felt him behind me, but before he could speak or reach out to me I turned to him in anger, wiping my lips and tears, comfortable in my anger the way I was in no other emotion. I had lived here for so long, I knew where all the creaking boards were located.

"WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU WANT FROM ME?" I screamed at him, as though he tried to take something from me, rather than give the keys to the car of my dreams. He stood there impassive, but looking deep into me.

"Tell me what just happened here, Jane."

"Fuck you!"

"No, I don't think so. Show me what happened." Rage took over then and I moved toward him as though I could do real damage to his mind, his form. He wanted to see what happened. He asked for it.

I put my hands on his person, one on the back of his neck and one on his cock, caressing him as though we had done it a thousand times, though I had a perfect right to pillage and take what I wanted.

"This is what happened, Eric," I said fiercely as I looked into his eyes and touched him as though I owned him. "You touched me like this!" I rubbed harder to make my point and felt him respond to the caress. "You told me that I could have the car, if I did what you wanted! For the first time since we met, you became just like everyone else!" I shoved back then, and stood before him, daring him to say I was wrong, daring him to tell me that he had not meant to imply he was buying me, that he owned me, as my mother's boyfriend Charlie had told me for years as he touched me in that same way.

"You dear Jane, are very fucked up," he said softly and not without some compassion. I burst into hysterical laughter.

"You think?" I asked, sarcasm falling out like change at an arcade. Words and quarters becoming bullets to disturb that calm demeanor before me. I was a fucking mess, snot on my face, the taste of bile in my mouth, my brain and stomach still locked in battle to see who could punish me more. Memories versus vomit, the knock down drag out of the century. "Come one! Come all! See the fucked up mess that is Jane Black as she dukes it out between her head and her stomach!" I screamed, my hysteria was growing as my comfortable bathrobe of anger dissipated when he gave it no fuel to stabilize.

"What of your heart, Jane? Does it have no stake in this battle for your very soul?" Gasoline.

"My heart? My fucking heart, you say? What would you know of hearts, let alone mine? WHAT DO YOU KNOW OF HEARTS, FUCKER?"

"I know that yours is broken," came his soft reply.

And just like that, a cold bucket of water on my rage. He was so fucking good. So unbelievably fucking good. So all knowing and so calm. All he left me were tears and a need to run.

So, I ran.

He followed me. I hadn't expected that. He caught me after only a few steps.

"WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?" I screamed at him again, not expecting an answer, but really needing one before I just folded myself into nothing and disappeared.

"I want you to stop running. I want you to face your monsters. I want you to accept the car. I want you to let me take you home." His answer was machine gun fire and I blinked at the rapid certainty of his words. He knew what he wanted. He knew how to ask for it. He was so much better than me that I had no choice. I lacked the tools to combat that arsenal.

"OK."

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He closed up the warehouse and took me home, following me up to my apartment. Not asking, he began undressing me. I was already dead inside and so whatever he did to me now was irrelevant. When he began undressing as well, part of me deep inside screamed in disgust and in vindication.

TOLD YOU! TOLD YOU SO!

He took me to the shower and turned the water on, pausing to make sure that the water was warm. He placed me in the shower with him, putting me under the water and tilting my head back. I watched with guarded eyes and waited for whatever was coming next. I wanted him, but I didn't know how to let myself have him. How to let him do what I wanted him to do.

How would it be different with him than it had been with Charlie?

God, I needed it so badly to be different.

He picked up my shampoo and started working it through my long brown hair, gently, his gaze never leaving mine. I wanted to open my mind and see what was next but my cowardice refused. Just let it come, I thought and closed my eyes, refusing to look or see where all this wound up. I was sure I knew anyway.

He tilted my head back and washed out the suds, and then he conditioned my hair, gently massaging my scalp. It felt so unbelievably good that I unconsciously stepped closer to him, pressing my breasts to his chest. His skin had been warmed by the water, but only in places since he was keeping me under the stream and not himself. He rinsed me again, and then he stopped. I opened my eyes to find him waiting. Just standing there, waiting. I blinked and then stopped thinking.

On purpose I turned off my brain, forgot where I thought I knew this was going and let myself just be in the moment.

In the moment a six foot four Norse god was standing in my shower, waiting for me to decide what happened next. I put my hands on his arms and shuffled around so that he was under the stream of water. He sighed as the warmth caressed his cold flesh and his eyes drifted closed. I reached up and tilted his head back, wetting his shoulder length blond hair as he had mine. Then I took the shampoo and began washing his hair.

He was eight inches taller than me, so to reach all this spots I had to lean my body against his, but the intent was not sexual. I was touching him as he had touched me. He had shown me what to do, and how to do it. I was mimicking his behavior and completely in the moment, feeling the shampoo suds up and the water now barely touching me as it streamed down his carved muscles. Enjoying my touch he now pressed himself closer to me, as I had with him. I washed out the shampoo and then massaged his scalp slowly with conditioner, gently as he had mine.

When we were done, I stood there. He hadn't shown me what came next.

He reached back and turned off the water and then stepped from the tub, offering me his hand to follow. He wrapped a towel around his hips and then took another to dry me off. Slowly he massaged the water from my hair, and then ran the towel over my shoulders, one at a time. He took one end in each hand and pulled it back and forth on my back, dropping lower with each swipe, kneeling as he worked his way down to my ankles. When he reached the end of me he released the towel from one hand and moved it up the front of my right leg in small slow circles. Repeating it then on the left. He worked his way up my body using the same slow sensuous circles until he reached my breasts.

Being a large woman, I had the large breasts that accompanied that frame. They hung pendulous between us, and his gaze on them made my nipples respond as though he had touched them. My brain tried to speak again. I told it to fuck off.

This was new. No one had ever cared for me like this before. I was a fool if I thought I could gauge where this new experience would go based on a past that was nothing like it.

When his hand, in the towel, cupped my breast to dry underneath it, I closed my eyes, feeling the sensation and denying its cause all at the same time.

"Open your eyes, Jane." It was the first time he had spoken since we left the garage and I was helpless to ignore his command. My eyes locked with his as he did the same to my other breast. My head was spinning and my heart was pounding.

Could a broken heart beat? Pound? Demand? Want?

He stopped then and stood before me, waiting. I reached for another towel and leaned into him, to massage the water from his hair as he had mine. I loosed the towel from his waist, letting it fall to the floor, and repeated his maneuver to dry his back and then up his legs in the same slow circles he had used on me. He was aroused now, so very hard and as I kneeled before him. I wanted very much to taste him.

All so new, I thought, licking my lips as I looked, his body responded to my gaze as mine had to his. He had not tasted me, so I had no permission to do that to him. Instead, using my hand I cupped him in the towel, drying him gently as he had me. He hissed, and I looked up to see that his eyes had closed now.

"Open your eyes, Eric." His gaze now locked with mine and I moved up his abs in the same slow sensuous circles he had used on me until again I was standing before him. Waiting.

He turned to scan the sink and found my toothbrush, adding toothpaste before handing it to me. He watched as I brushed away the remnants of earlier illness and when I was done he took me to my room and found my night gown, dropping it over my head and helping me get my arms through the holes gently. Then he turned back the covers and climbed into my bed.

I joined him and when he pulled me into his arms, placing my head on his chest in a kind and protective gesture, tears started slipping out again.

How could anyone be this tender? I had seen so much savagery. Felt so much pain. So much betrayal. And here a stranger was caring for me when even my own mother had found me unworthy. It was too much.

He held me as I cried, stroking my back gently, telling me wordlessly that I didn't know everything and that if I could be brave enough to accept that I might find things I had never dreamed of in this world.

I cried harder, and held him tighter, not able to tell him that I had dreamed of finding someone like him, of being in some place like this for my whole life. For the first time in my life I felt cared for, and it was so new and so unsettling that I had no idea what do with any of it.

I fell into sleep to escape the certainty that this must be the dream.

I didn't even feel him when he left. I only knew he was gone when I woke up alone, a Norse god shaped print in the bed next me and the feel of his lingering soft kiss on my forehead.


	6. Sympathetic Magic

**The Psychic- Sympathetic Magic**

Speed was my friend. I took it when I was tired. I took it when I was empty. I took it when I was afraid and it made everything seem manageable. It made me brave in a reckless stupid kind of way, but bravery in any form was welcome when I was too afraid to do anything at all.

It also brought clarity to me in a way that nothing had before.

When I was high I could _touch._ I could _be_ touched. I could be free. I could be someone else. Anyone else. Even a better version of me. I was fearless, and very near something like happy as the little pills marched through my bloodstream, removing doubts and fears.

Until I got high I was not able to think of last night. Unable to even consider the reality of Eric Fucking Northman and how he had reduced me to a puddle of goo with a simple gesture.

Not the car. The car was complicated. I didn't understand the car yet. Not the gift. Not my reaction to it.

It was the gentle caring the uprooted my certainty that I knew how the world worked. In the face of all my wrongness I turned to my old friend to help me process and accept what I felt coming. From him. From me. From me and him. From what he might do or say next that would continue to show me that I knew nothing.

Nothing at all.

I had so much energy when I was flying. With a head full of high I entered Wonderland and traveled up to him like I belonged there. He looked down at me and for the first time, with the help of the drug, I could feel what every woman felt when he looked at them. I could want what every woman wanted from him.

Speed made me not different anymore. It was why I loved it.

Fearlessly, I opened my mind and watched to see what he might do now that I was here. I expected multiple threads of possibility but there was only one before me. If I was a woman stoned, he was a man possessed, possessed with a total certainty of what had to happen next. He took my hand and led me back to his office, closing the door softly behind us as I stood in the middle of the room, my back to him and waited for him to bring to reality what I had already seen. His hands came to rest on my shoulders and he pulled me back against him for a moment before turning me to face him.

"I would like to make an arrangement with you, Jane Black." Anything, I thought

"What kind of arrangement, Eric Northman?" I asked.

"Work for me. I will pay you, provide a house for you live in. I will help you restore the car." His eyes were looking at the stitches along my hairline but his tone was soft and seductive. Flying I could feel that tone resonate not only in the air around us but in my body as well. Anything, I thought again.

"Anything," I said aloud.

"Anything?" he repeated, his gaze locking with mine. I nodded.

"After last night, anything, as long as you are part of it."

"Don't you want to know what you will be doing?"

"I already know. I saw you explain it. You provide for me and in return I work for you, with humans, with vampires, with others as you need. I will be your secret weapon. I will protect you. I will help you. I will give you my eyes that you might see the future." He smiled, sadly I thought.

"And it's just that easy, Jane. I don't even need to ask and you will offer me-"

"Anything," I said again. I didn't want to explain it was because of last night. I didn't want to tell him it was because I was high. I didn't want to go further into useless words that would only bring us back to the fact that I would give him anything he wanted from me. I had no one to think anything of me one way or the other, but even if I did, the simple truth was this. He had shown me something that I had never seen before. I wanted to see it more. For that gift I would do anything. Anyone who was not me, who had not seen the things I had seen, been the places I had been, would not understand.

They could fuck off.

Anything. Now and forever. Anything. Every cell in my body screamed it. It was a promise I would die to keep.

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He took me to a small house on the outskirts of Shreveport. It was quite nice. Two bedrooms and a light tight space in one the closets.

"For emergencies," he said as he toured me around. It was the nicest place I had ever lived. Cozy. "You can decorate it as you like." Of course I could. When we got to the garage the car was already there, along with a wall of tools. More tools than I had ever seen, and I had no idea what any beyond a wrench did. I had stopped in my tracks, my hand in his as I stared at the wall. "I will teach you." Of course he would. "What shall I get for you to drive while we work on the Corvette?"

"Anything." He chuckled softly then. It was my multipurpose go to answer with him for the night. For the week. For the rest of time. He moved to stand behind me, his hands on my shoulders again, his chin resting lightly on my head as I stared at the car.

"It's sympathetic magic I have planned for you, Jane." I knew that, too. But I wanted to hear him say the words. "Every broken part that we replace on this car, this car that you would be if you could, every fix we make will mirror a fix that is made to yourself. When I run my hands along it's frame, I will be touching you, first as you are, as you see yourself to be, and eventually as you wish to be." He stopped then and moved his hands to my waist, pressing closer against my back.

"I will show you how to remove the body shell. We will start with the frame and chassis first." He was whispering in my ear now, his tone low, rumbly, intimate.

He was talking about the car, and touching me, and I became the car, and the car became me. The power of the words humbled me. His words.

"Then we remove the body…then the motor and drivetrain." Oh, God, I was melting. He changed ears, "Then rework the suspension, the motor and transmission. Then the body and finally the interior." Small sounds escaped me accompanied by shallow pants. I was still free and flying, my body responding the way any sane woman would when he purred in her ear. He rumbled through the middle of me.

"When we are done, Jane. You will be who and what you have always been destined to be. If you trust me. Do you trust me, Jane."

"Not for a second," I answered, dropping my head back on his shoulder and pressing closer to him. I felt his chest move as he laughed, blowing cool air across my neck. Lips. I wanted lips across my neck.

"But you will give me-"

"Anything," I said again, cutting him off. Trust might come in time. And if I meant my words of promise, eventually I would have to give him my trust as well. It was part of the anything. If he asked me for it, it was his. I knew it. I needed him to as well.

"If you ask me to trust me, I will. If you ask me, I will give you anything." I could not have said that if I were not free and flying no matter how true the words were.

"I know," he whispered in my ear and I wondered if he knew the words that had fallen from my lips or the ones that drifted through my mind. They would all be his at the asking. "But if you decide to trust me, it must be a gift and not a request, Jane." Fuck me, I was done. I could not stop shaking. I turned then and kissed him like I had wanted to do since I had first seen him.

I kissed Eric Northman the way I had always wanted to be kissed. It started out slow and soft, my hand on his neck, the other an open palm on his chest. Holding him close and poised to push him away. I couldn't help it. Even stoned I was still Jane Black the coward in some form.

My lips touched his and then pulled back opening slightly, going back for more. Repeating the break I came back, my tongue running out to caress his lips, begging entrance, and I could hear angels sing when he granted my wish. My tongue touched his, and slowly pressed and gave ground as I lost myself in his kiss. I wished he could read my mind and I could just keep kissing him forever. I took a breath through my nose and kept kissing him, not wanting this to ever end.

But part of my perfect kiss was the ending. It was pulling back and seeing that not only was I wasteland but he was well. That I had touched as much as been touched by that perfect moment that served lips and tongues better than the most powerful words ever could.

Dynasties might fall in words and deeds, but love and healing came from kisses.

When I pulled back, his eyes came open and the slightly dazed expression I saw there told me that I had indeed kissed this fabulous mythical creature in the fashion that I had always wanted to be kissed. I envied him. But only for a moment. "People kiss the way they want to be kissed, Jane," he said and then he kissed me.

If I had been able to think I would have thought that this was an extension of last night, where he showed me what to do. Now I had shown him what to do and he did it perfectly. My arms moved around his neck and his came around my back pulling me closer to him as he showed me not only what I wanted and needed but what was beyond my wildest dreams. Later that would come to me. Later when I was replaying this perfect moment in the chambers of my mind. Now I had only one thought.

This is why I promised you anything.

I lost myself in his arms and his kiss. Even though I knew he couldn't have heard me, I felt like he did.

When he pulled back and ended the kiss, I was the one who was dazed, but I heard his words again, and knew that for all his showing off of kissing skills he had just shown me a tiny piece of his secret self. He wanted to be kissed like he was the only man in the world, accepted, cared for, loved.

He wanted to be kissed as though the person kissing him would never ever choose to kiss another over him. As I looked into his eyes, I knew that I could kiss him like that, if he would let me. If I could let me. And in this moment thanks to my little friends I could do it. So I did.

My kiss told him that if I could kiss any man in the world, I would only ever choose him. The man, the vampire, the warrior that had taken me to bed last night and held me as my world crashed down. The man who had shown me warmth and compassion, asking nothing in return, in ways that had never been shown to me before. I kissed him like I would love him forever.

I had never been more honest in any word or deed.

Anything, my kiss told him. Anything now. Anything forever. For as long as I walked this new and wondrous world at his side. I would always kiss him like this. It felt so good that I knew I wouldn't need speed to do it again. I was too safe here in his arms to ever need a false courage again. I had been a fool to think I did tonight.

I covered his face in unspoken promises that I knew he understood, heard, and felt. "There is more I need to tell you," he said. His eyes were closed as I loved him in small light tokens of my affection. Of course there is, I thought. There will always be more with you. "There are things you need to learn to protect yourself not only in my world, but in yours as well, Jane." I was aching now for him to take me. I could hear him, and feel him and I wanted to feel more. "Your days will be spent learning self-defense, your nights when you are not working for me will be spent on sympathetic magic." I nodded and staked a claim on his neck.

That made him as crazy as it did me. "But I need you to know something, Jane." He pulled back from me now, his hands coming up to cup my face, as he looked deep into my eyes. I could barely focus and didn't want to because I knew what he was going to say next. He wanted me to hear it though, all the better to believe it, my dear. "Aside from the self-defense, everything else that will come is what you want Jane. I think you are perfect just the way you are."

"Busted and broken?" I asked, still clinging to my old stubborn bullshit. He shook his head.

"No. Unique. Strong. Special. You are a survivor, Jane. I recognize that. I see the beauty you have salvaged from the wreckage. I see the strength that shines inside. My gifts to you are not for the woman you want to be, but homage to the woman you are. The outside may change, your head may be less noisy as you slay your dragons one by one, but the true core of who you are is unshakeable. It is she that is most worthy, Jane."

"Your words…they are killing me, Eric. Please stop," I couldn't take it, so much, too much. I was drowning.

"Then let the part that you find so unworthy die, let it go, rise up from the depths and breathe, Jane. Accept what you want and let yourself have it."

I had died when I was nine. I had been murdered at thirteen. All that dead useless psychic flesh that I drug behind me, slowing me. Stopping me. Suffocating me. His words freed me like a shining sword that broke the shackles on my ankles. If he could see ME, if he could see ALL THAT, then it must be true.

And just like that. Just like magic. I took my first breath as a free woman. Then I hugged him. Tight. I turned in his arms and looked back at the busted and broken '65 'Vette and said the first thing that came to my mind.

"Can we start tonight?"


	7. Valley Girl Vampire Pet

**The Psychic- Valley Girl Vampire Pet**

We worked late that night. He explained in detail each thing he did and as he talked of the car I felt like he was talking of me. His large hands were so nimble and filled with care as he stripped the car down piece by piece. Teaching me of tools and cars. The Master and The Grasshopper. I couldn't help but snicker.

"Kung Fu flashback," I said when I got the eyebrow. He smiled.

"Ah, Grasshopper, I see." He made me tingle. "That will be even more true tomorrow. I have engaged someone special to teach you martial arts. His name is Parker Jackson. He has a school in downtown Shreveport. Your classes will be private, three mornings a week from six to nine."

"Private lessons?" He nodded as he worked, his eyes focused on the task at hand.

"He owes me a favor. You are not to tell him of our arrangement. I suspect he will ask, though he should not."

"Is there a particular story you want me to tell him, if he does?" He thought a minute, and asked me to pass him a wrench before answering.

"There are some humans who know we exist. A human in our world is known as a pet. Vampires keep them for sex and blood. You are to pretend that you are my pet, and that I am allowing you to learn self-defense as an…indulgence."

"So, then Parker Jackson knows about vampires?"

"Parker Jackson is a Were, a wolf specifically, so yes, he knows about vampires." He glanced at me when I didn't say anything for a moment.

"Shall I pack a basket and wear my red riding hood when I go to see him?" He snickered.

"Best he not know that you know about Were folk."

"No basket, check." I thought a minute. "How do pets behave, Eric?"

"Like they've been glamoured, vacant, fawningly subservient to their Master."

"Do you take their minds even if they want to be with you?"

"First, I don't keep pets, Jane. Though you will play that role when needed. Second, yes, other vampire do take a pets mind because no matter what they can never truly be trusted to not betray their Masters." I thought that one over.

"So, if others found out that I was not a pet and that I could not be glamoured they would kill me." He looked up at me from his task.

"Yes."

"Hence, the self-defense."

"Yes." I took a breath and let that sink in. "There will be additional training with me, specifically geared toward to vampire defense, but know this. Any action you take will only be a last resort. Our best defense against discovery will be your ability to play the fawning pet." I smiled.

"Totally," I said already knowing how I wanted to play my meeting with the Werewolf tomorrow.

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Eric returned me to my apartment around two in the morning so I could get some sleep before my first lesson in kicking ass. He had only walked me to the door and placed a gentle kiss on my forehead. I was no longer flying and so was not able to express my disappointment in his not coming in. I told myself it was late and I had to train and pack for my move tomorrow.

I had trouble falling asleep and after tossing and turning for an hour I realized what I needed to find peace. I had never done this before, never wanted to do this before. I wasn't sure where or how to start.

My hand slid down under the sheet and between my legs. I was slick with arousal from needing him, from wanting him. I found my pleasure center and when my hand started to move I gasped at the sensations that pounded through me. I slid down further in the bed and opened my legs wider, imagining him resting between them, kissing me, whispering my name as he rocked against me, causing friction that was so delicious I had to stop a second and process.

I closed my eyes and saw him after the shower last night as I kneeled before him. So hard and right there, and I remembered how much I had wanted to take him in my mouth and taste him. I saw myself doing that, imagined taking him all the way into my mouth and down my throat as his fingers tangled in my hair and my name fell from his lips. My hand was moving faster now and I was lost in the images of my mind. I saw him pull me up and sit me on the sink moving between my legs and sliding into me in one long hard stroke before he started pounding into me deep and hard.

Oh, he felt so good. I added the kiss from earlier tonight, when I was telling him that I would only ever kiss him. "Only you, Eric," I whispered into my empty room as my hand moved faster and I opened my legs wider still, seeing them wrap around him and pull him deeper. His fangs sank into my neck as I came hard, screaming out as my body convulsed with pleasure.

"So, that's what all the fuss is about," I said to the dark room after experiencing my first and only orgasm to date. I fell asleep almost right away, only a little sorry that I had not been able to share it with the Viking who had stolen my stupid broken heart.

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I cursed his name when my clock went off at 5:00. He wasn't even in bed yet for the day and I was up. Martial arts at 6:00am confirmed the sadist streak I had suspected behind those baby blues. I pushed back the rational voice that told me the drag I was feeling was the down from the high of yesterday.

The highs were high but the lows were the lowest.

Not doing it again, so shut up, I told my know it all brain.

I struggled into the shower and gulped coffee as I called for a cab to get to the school on time. When I climbed out in front of Jackson Martial Arts I stood there a moment and let myself wonder what the hell I was doing. I had a job that I had not been to in a week, which meant I probably didn't have a job anymore.

Solves that problem, my brain said in smug tone. Just go with it. What else are you doing? I stopped there and really thought about what I had been doing. I had been a shambling dead thing before the accident, before I found myself in Wonderland, before I found Eric Northman. I was not living, only existing. This was different.

I looked at the building again, and thought, I could be different, too.

The lights came on inside just then, and the second finest man I had ever seen looked out the door and called to me. "Jane Black?"

"Oh, my God, like totally!" I said, twisting the end of my pony tail that I had pulled to the left side of my head. I saw him roll his eyes, and in the possibilities that wound themselves around me, he strangled me by 6:10, and then Eric killed him exactly twelve hours later. That road in his mind ended and I saw him gird up his mental loins and decide to tough it out.

I was going to have some fun with Parker Jackson.

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By 7:00 I knew that beyond a doubt Jackson could rival the streak of sadism in Eric. After sizing me up, and going in the back to get me a karategi, he had directed me to change and I had been running my ass off ever since. I was struggling the breathe, the most strenuous thing I had done in years was look for loose change in the sofa cushions. I was in no way prepared for this.

Eric was going to be really, really pissed off if this guy killed me before I got to actual do any work for him.

"Five more minutes!" Parker called out from where he was sitting in the corner. I imagined fist punching his handsome face, his long dark curly hair flying as his ass tumbled to the floor, a look of surprise in his brown eyes. He was almost as tall and well-muscled as Eric, so I knew I couldn't take him now, but give me time, and the fact that he will have been the one that taught me to do it will be all the better.

Fueled by images of my vengeance I ran on. It was surprisingly motivational.

At the end of my run Parker worked me through some stretches, explaining how the muscles needed to warm before stretching. After that we talked about the philosophy of karate. "To some karate appears to be a series of violent movements but it really is about peace and peace of mind. It's about knowing that when conflict arises you are able to deal with it swiftly and confidently. It is from the peace of knowing that, that you are able to move through your life with confidence and humility." I was moved by what he said, but I remembered I had a part to play.

"Totally, like, you know that is what I always thought, too!" I needed some gum to pop the next time. He rolled his eyes again and went on walking me through the stances, speaking of balance and power.

He stopped then and bowed to me, I was shocked to see it was nearly 9:00. After the running was over, time had flown. "Next time before you run, you will meditate for fifteen minutes on all the things I have shown you today. You will clear your mind and focus on the lesson to come." I gave him a vacant stare and twisted my pony tail again. "It shouldn't be hard," he said, trying to sound nice at least, no matter what he thought of the valley girl vampire pet before him.

"Totally," I said, just to piss him off. I was amused and pleased that it was so easy to do.

Until the muscles are ready, the mind is sharp enough for both, Grasshopper.

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Feeling full of energy after my work out I decided to walk home. I stopped for a coffee and as I walked I let my mind wander through what Parker had said this morning, now able to pay attention and not worry about letting my mask slip.

It's about peace and peace of mind from knowing that when conflict arises you are able to deal with it swiftly and confidently.

Dr. Northman strikes again. He knew exactly what I needed and where to send me to get it. I wondered if he knew karate, and if so would he spar with me when I was ready? The images of that possibility filled my mind and I was home before I knew it. Out front was a man leaning against a new black Mustang convertible, dangling the keys from his finger. He stood up as I approached.

"Ms. Black?" Oh, you must be nasty, my mind supplied as I opened up to look at the threads around him.

He was here to drop off the car that Eric had gotten me.

He was going to go get breakfast when he was done here.

He was going to get food poisoning from that breakfast.

He was going to miss an appointment he wasn't sure he wanted to keep that night with a man he did not like. A man he feared. I caught a glimpse of a face and then it all shifted away.

I started to open my mouth and change his fate, but how would I explain it? I would be risking exposure and Eric was adamant that no one know what I could do, for my own safety. I closed my mouth again.

"Yes?"

"Compliments of Mr. Northman," he said handing me the keys. Taking them I thanked him for dropping off the car and asked if needed a ride someplace.

"No, but you could call me a cab when you get inside, if you don't mind."

"Not at all." Something about him made me not want to invite him in, so I left him on the curb. After making the call I looked around and tried to decide what to pack. In the end, I took my clothes, which all fit in my own suitcase, my record player and my vinyl. Everything else was nothing I needed. Nothing I wanted.

I left everything, including the ghost of who I had been in the apartment and locked the door with the keys inside. I would call the landlord when I got to my new place and settle any debt. I wanted to disappear and not say anything, but a missing persons report could bring unwanted attention on me and Eric. Best to finish this right.

I buried my foot in the floor and shifted gears in my new car, on my way to my house, my new life. Believing just a little bit that I could be a different person.

The wind in my hair made me feel free. But I knew the car, the house and the belief was all Eric.

He could not physically be with me during the day, but he was a part of me now. Never far away. If I could have had him closer I would have, but even this much was more than I had ever dreamed to have.


	8. The Greatest of Sinners

**The Psychic- The Greatest of Sinners**

While I was out settling up with my old landlord I stopped and picked out a new bed. King sized. I had always wanted one of those. Bed that ran for miles of dreams that I had never dared let myself dream. I needed it now. Then I stopped for sheets and covers. I choose a deep dark blue. It would match his eyes in the night of my room.

It would remind me of him in the cold naked day.

The bed fit perfectly in my new room and by the time it was delivered, set up and made up I was wore the hell out. I dropped my clothes on the floor and climbed in. I was dreaming of Eric there with me in the soft satin sheets, again something I had always wanted. His hands were running down my hip, stroking me awake as he kissed my neck and pressed close to my back.

Best Dream Ever. I moved to take his hand and put it between my thighs and that is when the dream ended.

Pain. Intense and screaming in my arms. I gasped and sat up and that only made it worse. Every muscle I had was screaming bloody murder.

"What's wrong?" asked my dream Eric, concern plain in his voice as I whimpered.

Dream Eric was Real Eric…and I had been about to…and then it got worse. I missed out on that with him because I had over done the work out today. I threw myself back on the bed, and moaned again as the shaking dislodged new pains.

"I'm in idiot."

"Explain."

"I worked out for three hours and then walked several miles back to my apartment. My muscles are in full revolt." After a moment he rolled me over and moved himself to the foot of my bed. Slowly, gently, he started massaging my legs. It was heaven on a cracker, served by an angel with fangs. I moaned again, not able to hold it in. Each new muscle group screamed in protest as his hands moved up my legs, but quickly surrendered in grateful ease to his ministrations.

I cried out when he got to my back. The mess on the outside now matched the mess on the inside.

"Birth pains are hard, Jane," he said quietly as he continued to massage me. I knew what he meant, if I was changing then it would likely hurt in more ways than one. He moved up to my shoulders now and then down each arm, his body now back up beside mine. My face was buried in the pillow now, muffling the moans of pleasure and pain as he worked me in ways that I had never thought I would want or need.

He placed a kiss in the middle of my back and then disappeared from beside me. A second later I heard the water running in the tub. Several minutes later he was back and had me in his arms. When the extremely hot water hit me I moaned again.

"You must stop that, woman."

"Can't help it. Feels good."

"Yes, it sounds that way, and you are making me want to see for myself." He had seated me in front of him, his knees rising from the water, letting me sit between his legs. The tub was large and there was just enough room for the two us. I leaned back into his chest and closed my eyes. "You were dreaming when I came to bed."

"You stayed here today."

"I wanted to work on the car with you tonight." My brain was skipping random, like a damaged 33.

"Who runs the club when you are away?"

"Doesn't matter," his hands had come around me now and moved up to cup my heavy breasts, massaging my nipples.

"Doesn't matter," I echoed, raising my hands to his, showing him that I wanted his touch. I remembered the dream and took his right hand in mine sliding it down to where I wanted it to be. "I was dreaming of this," I said as I guided him into my slick folds. "Dreaming of you." I kept my hand on his, not because I thought for a second he needed my guidance, but because I wanted to share this with him.

Soon the ache in my muscles was a distant remote nagging. Nothing could distract me from what his wondrous fingers were doing beneath the surface of that hot water. His other hand was gently pinching my nipple and I felt his lips on my neck, in that spot that must have been marked X for him. He found it like a pirate after treasure every time. He nipped me with his fangs and I came in his arms, moaning his name. It was better than when I did alone.

So, so much better to feel him there with me.

My mind opened.

I saw him later, alone, relieving his own tension.

I saw him at Wonderland relieving his tension with someone else.

That hurt deeper than aching muscles could touch. Still blown open by the intimacy of what I had just shared with him I gave the words tumbling no thought. "You'd rather jerk off alone or fuck a stranger than be with me?"

"No."

"Then why?"

"You're hurt." My old baggage was opening up. Calling that a bullshit excuse. The new me was trying to go all gooey again. I shoved it all away.

I had learned how to want and ask for it from him.

"I want you to take me back to bed, please." He took me from the tub and dried me off at vamp speed. My muscles had no time to hurt, and the bath and massage had helped quite a bit. When he laid me down I pulled him down with me.

I saw him pull back, dress and leave.

I saw him dress and stay, working on the car.

I saw him buried between my thighs a look of pure ecstasy on his beautiful Viking face.

That one, I thought. I want that one!

Pulling him down and opening my legs to brace him, my hands wound themselves in his hair and I kissed him like he always wanted to be kissed. He responded to me wild. That kiss unlocked him, and I took his pieces and touched each one with reverence.

As I worshiped his mouth I guided him to my entrance and pushed all thoughts away of any other time I had ever thought I was here. I had never been here with someone who cared for me before. Someone that I cared for.

This was a totally new experience.

A totally new opportunity to feel totally new things. I thought he might try and hold back again, but I deepened the secret kiss that he had taught me and welcomed him in.

The feeling of him broke my kiss. My eyes wide in wonder at the feeling of man who had inspired my body to want him. There was no pain! No pinching grabby hands with alcohol breath. No shrieking in my mind that demanded I get up and run away and never stop running.

This feeling of closeness and sharing of self is what my mother and her boyfriend had taken from me. Had tried to take, because I had found it now. In me. In his arms. In this place.

I would never ever fucking let it go again.

He moved then, pressing deeper, pulling back, and my body instinctively squeezed him, wanting to keep the feeling of him inside me. Wanting to keep him there. Here. With me. I kissed him again, reinforcing that he was what I wanted above all things. His hand cupped my breast as he moved inside me and control of the kiss shifted back to him as I moaned in wonder and joy at his movements.

He kissed me then like I had always wanted to be kissed and he completely took my breath away. I opened my eyes just in time to see that look on his face in reality that I had reached for in my mind and to know that I had pleased him so was just what I needed to tumble over the edge. I pressed my forehead to his and let my eyes go nearly cross to keep them locked with his. "Only you, Eric," I whispered as I tumbled, convulsing around him inside me, holding him close as the edge of world loomed beneath me and I kept falling and falling.

He moaned and slid his fangs into my neck then, coming deep inside me, and setting me off again.

"Only you," I whispered again, feeling his mouth tugging softly in the X spot he had claimed for himself. I loved that there was a way I could care for him as he had for me.

Honored that he would let me. I slept then, not caring if he drank until I never woke. I had already had the best experience life had to offer. If that was all, it would be more than enough.

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I had not felt him leave, but his return awoke me. I moved cautiously, assessing the pain and found that it was much improved from earlier. He was rattling a bag as he moved around the dark room.

"What have you got there?"

"Bengay, Tylenol and scissors. The clerk I glamoured said that it would help your muscles." I turned the lamp on beside he bed and saw that he removed his clothes again. "Shall I rub some on?" He had already gotten a glass of water for the pills and handed those to me first. I nodded, crushed again at his thoughtfulness. I hoped then that it would always be so.

I would be the greatest of sinners to take such a gift for granted. I moved to lay back down but he stopped me.

"Wait a moment, there is something I want to do first." He came toward me with the small scissors and a second later I felt him remove the stiches from my head. I watched then as he pierced his thumb with a fang and rub the blood on the wound. He repeated the action where he had bitten me.

"What does that do?" I felt a tingle on my skin.

"Heals your wounds." I felt my eyes open in surprise.

"You can do that?" I asked, looking at him with new eyes.

"Yes. My blood has many properties of healing and other things as well."

"Like what?"

"If you were to drink it, I could feel you, find you if ever we were separated." He was watching my wounds and after a moment he licked the residual blood away from my head and my neck, making me shiver.

"Do you think that we will be separated?" He didn't answer me, and I took his hand seeing that his wound had now closed as well. I was thunderstruck. "Would me tasting your blood make me a vampire like you?"

"No," he said, but I was not sure if that was the first or second question he was answering.

"I would," I said earnestly, still holding his hand. He kissed me softly on the forehead. "If it would help you I would do anything."

"I know. Now, and let me take care of you."

That was getting easier to do. So I let him.

After he covered me in Bengay he wrapped me in covers and his arms and settled in behind me. I swear I think I purred in joy. His kindness undid me in so many ways. "Better?"

"Much. Thank you."

"You must learn, Grasshopper, when to say when."

"I've been yelling when my whole life, afraid to live. Afraid to take a chance. I can't let anything pass me by now."

"Still, damaging yourself is not the objective. Healing yourself is what you should be focused on."

"I was focused on that. Do you know karate, Eric?"

"Yes, I studied the discipline a long time ago. I find the meditation helpful in times of stress."

"You stress?"

"Sometimes."

"About what?"

"Being a vampire is sometimes complicated."

"How?"

"We live under the constant threat of discovery, and there are other things as well. Political things." He hesitated. I reassured.

"You only have to tell me what you want to tell me, Eric. What I need to know to do my job for you and keep you safe." That brought back images of this morning. "Oh, by the way, the guy who dropped off my 'Stang? He will be sick for the next few days."

"Sick?"

"Yeah, he left here cruising for a serious case of food poisoning. I chose not to stop him because I wouldn't know how to explain it. I did the right thing didn't I?"

"Yes, you did."

"He was going to miss an appointment with someone this evening, someone he didn't want to meet because he was scared of them."

"Did you get a name?"

"No, but I saw his face." I thought a minute. "If you will get my sketch pad I think I can draw him for you." He retrieved the items and sat back down his back against the sexy leather headboard of my new king size bed, moving me to rest against his chest. He piled pillows in my lap for a desk. He didn't speak as I drew and I tried to concentrate on the memory from this morning and not the sexy vampire I was leaning against.

As the picture became clearer I felt him lean forward and look over my shoulder. The growl that escaped him was scary even to me. I stopped and turned to him, seeing he was focused on the pad in my hand. His fangs came down and blue fury passed through his eyes as a name passed his lips.

"Andre."


	9. Dancing On The Inevitable

**The Psychic- Dancing On The Inevitable**

"Who is Andre?" I asked turning to face him. He didn't answer right away. Clearly he was debating on what to tell me. "If I don't need to know that's cool." He stared at the picture a few minutes longer. I could see his mind racing. I opened mine.

I saw him leave and go to a house where he found the guy from this morning sick. He also found "Andre" outside the house. Eric loomed over him and claimed the man as "his." The man swung a silver chain at Eric, and I noticed then he was wearing gloves. Eric fell to the ground. I saw him stay here with me and the string of the man and Andre disappeared.

I saw him leave and go back to the club to place a call. "I want to talk to the Queen," he said.

Sensing that I was away he prodded me gently and asked me what I saw. I told him. He grew more thoughtful and who knew it was possible, less talkative.

I waited.

"Can you see what happens if I don't do any of those things?"

"I have never tried to go beyond what comes to me. Do you want me to?" He nodded and I took a deep breath and leaned back against him, trying to clear my mind and focus on Eric's energy only.

I opened myself to feed as I had when we went to see the band, using the only energy in the room, which was his. I let my mind feel the music that was always playing and I followed the melody into the future of no action.

It was like sliding into his body and hitting fast forward. I ran past him with me, though somewhere I cataloged that to play on slower motion later.

He slept.

He rose.

She called him.

"Northman. Andre tells me that you have taken a pet. Is there something special about this one?"

"Only that she is mine."

"Come to the palace tomorrow night. Bring the pet. I want to see what makes her special."

I could feel his tension at her request. He did not want to comply but was at a loss as to how to avoid it.

"Yes, my Queen."

"We have much to discuss you and I about the Revelation."

"Yes, my Queen."

"Don't disappoint me. You know how I hate that." She hung up.

I had been telling him what was said as I saw it.

"I need to find a way to avoid that future, Jane." I nodded and thought.

"The man that brought me the car, what is his address?" Eric told me and I reached for the phone beside the bed.

"Hi, yeah, I just saw…um someone lurking in the shadows of my neighbor's yard. Can you send someone to check on him. I think he might be planning to break in or something!" I told them the address where I had seen the prowler, and then gave my address, which was the address of one of the nearby houses and hung up.

Then I closed my eyes and focused on the thread where Andre was allowed to talk to the man who had delivered my car before Eric could stop him. I saw the police arrive before Andre could knock and summon the sick man to the door. Andre left when they arrived. I saw them knock and talk to the sick man a few minutes and then take a look around the house, and then driving away. Andre came back ten minutes later.

"That will interrupt him. You can get there in exactly forty-five minutes and take his memory of me and the car before Andre comes back." I opened my eyes and looked at Eric. You will have ten minutes to get in and out before he returns.

Eric was moving, and dressed before I could blink. He stopped and looked down at me a moment before coming forward and tucking me back in. He kissed me on the forehead softly and asked the last thing I expected.

"You like the 'Stang, as you call it?"

"Yes." He nodded the air of man who had done a job well.

"Good." He brushed my hair back and then he was gone.

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Despite worrying for him I fell asleep. Too much happening too fast and I was mentally exhausted as well as physically. When I awoke it was still dark and he was back with me in bed. I turned to him and snuggle against his cool chest, his arm came around me.

"Did you fix it?"

"Yes, thanks to you, Jane."

"Is there anything else I can do to help?" He thought a minute.

"Can you see why Andre was meeting with my day man?"

"What's a day man?"

"Vampire's often use or employ humans to handle business for them during the daylight hours. The man who delivered your car is Jonas Smith, and he is my day man."

"He had met with Andre about you before, Eric." He nodded in the dark and stroked my back.

"Can you tell me why?" I closed my eyes and tried to find the thread again, but Eric's actions had changed the landscape and thread was no longer there. After several moments I gave up.

"Sorry. You changed things. It's not there anymore. I can visit Jonas tomorrow and try and figure it out?"

"No. I took his memory of you so that he wouldn't know you existed. To send you back would defeat that."

"Not if I pretended to be someone or something else."

"Like who?" I smiled in the dark.

"I have some ideas, no worries."

"I can't help you during the day, Jane. It's not safe." He slid down next to me now and I could feel his concern for me.

"It's not safe for Jane Black, the pet. Joyce Green, the Jehovah's Witness is a whole other thing. I can be near enough to get the new threads and see what happens next."

"Why would you do this, Jane? Why take this risk?" His hands had wound into my hair now and I was melting at his touch.

"Bengay. Tylenol. Scissors." He made a rumbling sound in his chest and he leaned in toward me. When his lips met mine I forgot what words were, let alone how to use them. He rolled me over gently and moved his body atop mine. My legs opened for him, and he felt so right there. My hands came up to his face.

"You told the Queen that I was yours. What did that mean, Eric?" I felt him nudging into me ready welcoming body and gasped with pleasure as he made his entrance.

"That no other vampire can feed from you," he whispered as he slowly pressed into me, the sensation making my brain burn. "That no other can touch you without my permission."

"W-would you let them touch me, Eric? Could you stop the Queen if she wanted me?" He growled again, and thrust harder into me, but didn't answer. The small still thinking part of me knew that he would want to, but if it were really that simple, he wouldn't have needed to stop Andre from discovering me. His hands were all over me, and I was losing myself in him, raising my legs higher, feeling the twinges in my over worked muscles, but not caring. I needed him. I wanted him.

Picking up my silent queues he deepened his strokes and I felt the pleasure building in me again. He was taking me apart and putting me back together with his touch. I saw the 'Vette in my mind, and how it would be when he was done.

How I would be when he was done.

"Only you, Eric," I whispered again and kissed him, hot and demanding as he sped up and returned my kiss.

My mind opened then and I saw him at some point in the future, his hair had changed and he was sitting on a throne in another club. The walls were red and he was looking at some small device in his hands. His face was bored, and all around him were men and woman vying for his attention. He looked so lonely my heart broke and I pulled him tighter against me.

_The Viking's path is not your path,_ I heard in my mind.

No! I said back to that voice. I won't lose him!

_The Viking's path is not your path,_ the voice said again. I sobbed and tears started to slip out as I realized that I was not in this red room. I was not among the throngs that wanted his attention.

"Don't stop, Eric!" I said as I held him closer. He kissed away my tears and maintained his pace. I refused to let that future spoil this moment. He was mine now and I had proven tonight that what I saw could be changed.

I kissed him like I would never kiss him again, and it pushed him over the edge. When I felt his muscles stiffen and heard him gasp in my ear my body responded and followed after him, seeking to hold that moment forever. I kept my arms and legs wrapped around his large frame, holding him, placing soft kisses in his hair, on any part of him I could reach without letting him go. He rumbled again in his chest and slid down just enough to put his head on my breast, his arms banding around me, underneath my back.

Wrapped in steel muscle coolness I drifted toward sleep.

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I woke to muscles that only held a tiny resentment for me, a sunny room and a note.

_**Jane,**_

_**Be careful if you go to see Jonas. Be here at nightfall. I am nearby.**_

_**Eric**_

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After squashing that tiny resentment with Tylenol, I stopped at the local Kingdom Hall to get some pamphlets and hear the spiel. I had heard it before but had never listened. I wanted it to be fresh when I knocked on Jonas' door.

It took him awhile to get to the door and he looked like shit. The food poisoning was really kicking his ass.

"Hello, sir. Have you let God into your heart today?"

"What?" he asked, trying to focus on me through his illness.

"Oh! I can tell that you are suffering! Can I come in for just a few minutes and talk to you about the Lord in your time of trouble?"

"Uh, n-no. Now is not a good time."

"Is there a good time to seek salvation, friend? When the Lord comes to take his faithful home will you tell him to come back at a better time?" As my lips moved my mind grabbed the threads of energy around him and opened them up.

He invited me in.

He shut the door in my face.

He ran from the door to throw up again, leaving it open and me standing there, pamphlets in hand.

That last one locked in.

His hand came up over his mouth and in his urgency to get to the bathroom he left the door standing open. I didn't need to go in, I just needed a few moments to track the threads.

I saw him meet with Andre in a few days for updates and realized he had been reporting on Eric for some time now to this Andre.

"He runs the club and then goes home. There is nothing else to tell you. Mr. Northman is just businessman in Shreveport. He is fair in his dealings, his employees are happy for the most part and there is nothing negative I can tell you. What's this position you are considering him for anyway?"

The thread shifted. I concentrated, pushed out the sound of Jonas worshipping the false porcelain god and tried to follow Andre. After a moment I saw him standing in a plush room before what appeared to be a young woman.

"My Queen, the Northman is respected in Shreveport and would seem to an excellent candidate for Sherriff of Area 5 when we complete the Great Revelation." I saw her nod and the thread shifted away. I focused harder and dug into Eric's thread then and saw the red walled club from the night before.

Now though in the room were three men and two women and Eric was talking about how someone had been stolen sixty thousand dollars from his club Fangtasia.

The thread shifted again and then disappeared. I did the same pulling the door closed quietly leaving Jonas to recover in his own time.

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It was early afternoon and I had nowhere to go and nothing do until Eric rose for the night. My mind was spinning on the red club, Fangtasia and the fact that at some point in the future I was going to lose my Eric. The thought terrified me . I thought for a moment of telling him that I had found nothing with Jonas.

It was a fleeting moment.

I owed him more than that. Had volunteered to do this.

I would not betray him. He meant too much for me to be anything less than honest with him.

That decision made I drove home, hoping that I was doing the right thing, since it was the only thing I could do and still look him in the eye when he rose tonight.

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I was sitting in the driver's seat of the 'Vette when he came out. He had stayed in his space here again, and it warmed my terrified heart that again he had chosen to rest here with me.

While I had been waiting I had been pondering the weighty question of whether I should tell him all the details. Were some things destined to be? Would I force change when I told him that he would name his new club Fangtasia or would he name it that because I told him he would? By disclosing the details like that was I taking away his free will or was I dancing on what was only inevitable and not changeable in any way?

I was in over my head and needed him to help me sort through it all. It kept coming back to that in my thoughts.

I needed Eric.

I wanted Eric.

Would my knowledge of his future and the sharing of that knowledge lead to me losing him.

_The Viking's path is not your path._

Fuck you! I told the voice in my head and gripped the steering while tighter.

"What is wrong, Jane?" he asked from the doorway.

"Do you believe in Free Will, Eric?" He stopped moving toward me and raised an eyebrow.

"Yes"

"So, what happens if I tell you what I see? Does knowing what is coming negate your Free Will by forcing a reality that you might not choose? Or does it give you the chance to make another choice and possibly alter your course for the worse?" He considered a moment.

"Your sharing your gift with me offers me a chance to change or accept what is to come. That is my Free Will." I nodded.

"I think I am a Wild Card because I am not allowed to see what is coming for me directly. If I am not to see what is coming for me, then there is no chance to change it directly. I changed Andre finding out about me, but I did that by changing what happened to you. If there is some kind of universal idiot switch that stops me from changing what happens to me, am I wrong to change it for you?"

After a long pause he said, "I think that only you can know that answer, Jane, as only you can see the future." I smiled, not because I was amused but because I was all cried out on what my instinct and voices told me I was going to lose.

I would fight where and when I could but I didn't really have a lot of hope that there was a place for me in the future that I saw for him.

"What did Andre want?" I took a deep breath and let it out.

"The Queen wants you to be the Sheriff of Area 5 after The Great Revelation." Both eyebrows went up.

I had either freed him or damned him and I knew not which one. I waited to see what he would say and when he did not speak I looked at him directly for the first time since he had entered the garage.

"Is that a good thing or a bad thing I just told you?"

"It is neither and you just gave me more time to consider the offer."

"You're going to take the job, Eric."

"Probably."

"Why?"

"Because as Sheriff of Area 5 I can claim you as mine and not even the Queen can take you then."

"If you take it, Eric, let it be for you and not for me."

"It is for me," he said softly. I was out of the car and in his arms so fast my head was spinning.

"I love you, Eric," told him as I hugged him close. He stroked my hair and placed a kiss on my head, hugging me back just as tightly.


	10. Scared, Amazed and Amused

**The Psychic- Scared, Amazed and Amused**

He didn't ask me why I was such a fucking mess. I supposed that if he had things he didn't want to talk about he had to understand that it went both ways. Since we had made our arrangement I had not taken anything that he had not offered from his mind. It was a sign of respect. Unspoken but we both seemed to understand. He moved around the garage at super vamp speed and before I knew what he was doing he was done.

"What's that?" I asked looked at the wooden frame he had just constructed in less than two minutes.

"It's a dolly to hold the car shell when we take it off the frame." I watched him then, go to wall and pull a couple of wrenches down. He motioned me over and showed me bolt in the floor on the driver's side. It was rusted out, so he moved back the wall and came back with a container of something called PB Blaster and started covering the rusted bolt. Then he moved to vamp speed again and moved around the car. "We don't want the bolts to break, so we need to loosen them as much as possible before we start. He was back in moment. "We need to give them a few minutes to let them soak." I nodded.

"So, since we have a few minutes, what's the Revelation?"

"My kind is planning to reveal themselves to the human world." I was shocked, but it made sense given what I had seen about Fangtasia.

"Why?"

"It is commonly believed that as technology advances we will not be able to hide from humanity for much longer, and that it would be better if we reveal ourselves before we are discovered."

"Best defense," I said, smiling slightly.

"Exactly."

"What would you do as the Sheriff of Area 5?"

"Police vampires, control revenue streams for the Queen." I couldn't help it. I immediately pictured him in a gun belt and Stetson hat. It worked for him. My fantasies ran to old west themes for a couple of minutes seeing him in his white hat facing down a black hat at high midnight while I stood on the side lines dressed as Ms. Kitty, feathers in my hair, corset pushing up my bosom. The humor faded quickly when I remembered that I wouldn't be here then.

"When?" I managed to get out and not sound like my heart was totally breaking.

"Soon. Sometime in the next decade." I opened my mouth to express that was not soon and then I remember who I was dealing with. Decades were minutes when you had forever before you. I could have another ten years with my beautiful Viking. It was at once a relief and a new sharp pain because I knew that ten years would never be enough. Nothing would ever be enough for me. I was quiet with my thoughts for too long. I felt him beside me before I knew what was happening.

"Is there something you aren't telling me, Jane?" I turned and his arms caged me against the Corvette, his body pressed close to me. I looked into his eyes and felt myself shake from all the emotion coursing through me, only accelerated by his closeness.

"Yes." I would never lie to Eric.

"Why?" He was looking at me intently, not perturbed in the least that I was being less than forthcoming. I felt my heart rate kick up and I was not able to keep my hands still. He was so close, and he wouldn't always be. I wanted to touch him while I could. While he was mine.

"I have seen a future that I want to change. I am afraid to tell you too much because I don't know if that will lock into happening." He leaned closer and kissed my lips softly.

"If you tell me, it could change the future." I closed my eyes and opened my mind, looking for threads of what might happen if I told him in this moment what I had seen.

I saw him deny the loss of me and take me hard and fast leaning against the car that was me and not me yet.

I saw him running with me while other vampires chased us. I saw them catch us.

I saw them kill him and take me prisoner.

I gasped at the pain of that image.

Never would I let him die, not for me, not for anyone.

He had continued kissing me as I looked into the future and he felt me shudder at the vision of his demise. He pulled back, his nose coming close to mine as he pressed closer.

"What?" he asked

"I doesn't end well if I tell you." He stared at me intently. I could feel him wanting to know more and for a moment I wished he could glamour it out of me, take the control from my hands and the weight of the decision from my back alone.

It was selfish.

I was selfish.

To keep my stupid selfish mouth shut I kissed him. Like he could feel my desperation to be close he kissed me back. I pushed the rest away and forced my way into this moment between us. Stretching it to make it fit and expand around me, insulating me from the unwanted visions that I had just seen.

The music that I could always hear grew louder in that kiss and let the sound take my mind away, leaving my body in the hands of creature that I had come to trust even more than myself.

I moved to his neck, nibbling my way across his skin making him purr against me. "Let's go out to eat," I said.

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I changed into a dress, the only one I owned. It was black and flouncy around my knees. It would be perfect for what I had mind.

We went to a dance club across town from Wonderland called Isis. The music was pounding to match my pulse. We took a table in the corner. I opened myself up and let the emotions of those around me flow in. There was so much energy in the air that I gasped as it passed into me. I turned to Eric and pulled his lips down to mine again. The frenzied desire of several hundred writhing bodies kicked me into overdrive. I had never felt anything like it before.

The doors that Eric had opened inside me allowed the energy of those around us to touch me in new and exciting ways. "Can you find us some privacy here?" He growled and pulled back to survey the room. It was large, a converted warehouse with catwalks above us. A few people were up there dancing and off to one side there was a lounge area that was dark and secluded. They even had a sofa there. He took my hand and started to pull me in that direction. Several people were sitting there when we arrived. I watched him catch their eyes.

"Leave."

When they were gone he sat us down on the sofa, pulling me close. I took a deep breath and dived back into the beat of the universal music and the energy of the people around us. It was thrumming through me so hard I was shaking in his arms, my body responding to all the desire filling the air. I moaned and he responded by pulling me into his lap, my back pressed to his chest, his arms coming around me.

His hand traveled up my thigh and found out that I had skipped the panties.

"I do like a woman with a plan," he whispered into my neck as I trembled in his arms. His hand slid between us and I felt him free himself from his jeans. I turned my head toward him.

"I love a man who knows how to keep up," I said kissing him savagely, pumped from the energy, and the want of what he was about to do. He slid into my ready welcoming body as the kiss ended and I turned back so he could have access to my neck. I dug deeper into the energy, the music and gave him a slow tight squeeze inside me. The energy quadrupled and he growled as his fangs slid into my neck. He took two slow long deep draws of my blood and then pulled back.

"That is fucking amazing," he said, going back for another pull, thrusting into me as he sucked my wound. I felt his body start to tremble as mine was, and knew that he was feeling it, hearing it then, too.

"Yes," I gasped. Agreeing. Confirming. Approving. One last slow deep drag, my eyes fluttering shut and I came, my pleasure spilling out like a cup too full. He thrust a few more times and I felt him come too. It was perfect.

I was perfect, when I was with him.

He held me in his arms a few minutes, his lips kissing my neck slowly. I felt his tongue caress the wounds, and my skin tingled again, telling me he was healing me. I wanted him again. That was ok, he was still inside me and I could feel him, hard again now. I glanced around and saw that we were still alone in the dark corner. He flipped me in his lap, I barely noticed his loss he was back so fast.

I wrapped my legs around him and took his lips for a kiss. I was still on his tongue, sweet and coppery. I wished I could feel what he felt when he bit me. "I will watch for someone coming," he said against my lips.

"I better be whose coming," I said, grabbing a hand full of his hair and pulling his face back, taking his mouth again. Before I knew it he had me up off the sofa with my back against the wall while he moved inside hard and fast. Vampire fast. Two seconds later I went off like rockets' red glare, he stifled my scream of pleasure with his kiss, swallowing it as he had my blood.

A few moments later he sat me back on shaky legs and leaned me against the wall while he trailed slow hot open mouth kisses up my neck. He spoke in my ear in between kisses, making me his confidant and priest for once, rather than the usual. "When you do that, it's like I am feeding off everyone in the room at the same time. You pull them all into your blood. It's…intoxicating. You, Jane, are intoxicating."

He should talk. I knew what it was to be high. His touch took it to levels I had never dreamed of before.

"We should get back and check the bolts. I want to get the shell off tonight." I nodded and he helped me adjust my dress before taking my hand to lead me from the club. On the stairs we passed a young man and woman, if he hadn't brushed against me in the tight stairwell I likely never would have noticed. But he did. I did. It was an accident but there was no undoing it once it was done.

When he touched me my pleasant warmth and Eric buzz was blown away. It felt like exploding ice shards. It cut. I gasped and Eric turned to me at once sensing my distress. "Sorry," the guy mumbled and kept walking.

"Jane?" Eric asked me turning on the step beneath me, eyes on level with mine. I shook my head to clear it and turned to see that the young man had moved to the sofa we had just vacated. Everything seemed fine. It was the touch of him that told me everything wasn't.

"Let's go back," I said, pulling on his hand. He came willingly enough but I could feel his curiosity about what we were doing. As if fate had decreed it the music moved to something slow and I moved us back to near the wall, close to where the young man was sitting, sipping a drink and chatting with the woman. "Something is wrong with him," I whispered to Eric as we swayed to the slow music, pretending to be focused only on each other. I felt him take a deep breath.

"Nothing smells amiss," he said in my ear, kissing my neck, which may have been for show but certainly didn't feel that way. I closed my eyes savoring his touch a moment and then focused on the man again. I opened myself up as I had before, but this time worked to focus only on him. At first I got him and the girl and had to concentrate to close her out. When I latched onto just him I felt the ice again, digging into my mind, cutting me.

And I could no longer hear any of the music that had filled my head near to the breaking point since I woke up from the accident. I dig deeper and found nothing but cold icy silence inside the man and around him.

"Taste," I managed to gasp out to Eric while I fought to hold on long enough for him to feel what I was feeling. I heard his fangs drop and pulled him closer as they slide into me again. He had barely started to drink when he jerked back from me, forgetting for a moment that we were in public. Even in the dim light I could see that he had taken a green tint to his face. I would have laughed if I hadn't been so fucking scared. One look in his eyes told me that this was new ground for him, too. He wiped his mouth on the back of his arm, and then started to lead us from the club again. He waited until we were in the Corvette before he spoke.

"What the fuck was that, Jane?" I sat there a moment, processing that he was asking me.

_**He**_ was asking _**me**_.

What the fuck? I didn't know I knew the answer until I heard the words, not my words, pass from my lips. I sounded scared, amazed and amused, in no particular order.

"I just met my first zombie."


	11. Unicorns

**The Psychic- Unicorns**

"Zombie? He echoed, eyebrow coming up.

"Walking dead thing, no music, no future possibility threads. If we go back and see him munching on his date that should pretty much clinch it," I said, reaching for the door handle.

"Wait," he put his hand on my arm. "I smelled no decay that would indicate that man was dead." Now, my eyebrow went up, and my hand covered his.

"Wait. Your nonplussed puss tells me that zombies are _real_." Both his eyebrows went up now.

"Yes, I have seen them before." I laughed.

"Ok, let's save me some time. What is not real?" He looked at me a moment, considering. I could see him thinking about blowing off my question. I could tell from his face that he was just as surprised at his answer as I was.

"Unicorns." His face was totally serious. For some reason that made it funnier.

"Unicorns?" I repeated, attempting to mirror his serious face and failing, totally.

"Unicorns," he said again.

"Glad I didn't meet you when I was seven you would have just broken my heart," I tried to joke, but my words fell flat even to my own ears.

_He can still break your heart._

I hated the fucking voices in my head. Why couldn't they just tell me burn shit like other people's voices allegedly always did? Figures mine had to be all busted and shit. Like I was all busted and shit.

Fuckers.

I reached for the door again, and again he put his hand on my arm. I looked at him. "It might not be safe."

"Probably isn't."

"Can't you 'see' what happened?" I shook my head.

"No, that is part of what stands out. What you tasted?" he nodded, "That was the absence of threads, of music that emanates from everyone and everything. It's like he was…stolen." He sat there a minute. Then he started the car.

"I must think on this," he said as he started driving. Part of me agreed that if in all his time he had never seen this that he was right to recommend caution, but I wanted to go back and find out more. When we drove away from where this man was I would likely never be able to find him again.

I opened my mouth and then I closed it again.

I had sympathetic magic waiting for me at home. I had a home. I had an Eric. Was it worth jeopardizing all these wondrous things to satisfy my own curiosity?

The choice was taken from me when he pulled out onto the street and started back toward the house. I was unsettled again, like I had been at nine, like I had not been since I had found Eric Northman.

What I had seen and felt had left me unsettled again.

Goddamnit!

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We were each lost in our own thoughts and did not talk on the way back to the house. I changed out of my black dress and joined him in the garage to take the shell off the car. Once it was settled on the wooden frame he had constructed earlier I could see the frame of the car and the motor. They were in desperate need of attention and care.

Just like their owner.

It only proved that even if there were something out there that unsettled me for a good reason I was not in any shape to deal with it. I still had too much I needed to do to get myself together to think that I could dive into someone else's shit and be of any help at all. Right now, I couldn't even get out of my own way.

That did not lessen my desire to break out the Scooby snacks and get down on this mystery. As if he knew what I was thinking, Eric spoke as he examined the motor and frame carefully for damage that would need to be repaired.

"Sometimes, we allow ourselves to become distracted with others problems because it lets us shift our focus from hard things we don't want to face about ourselves." He was right. It would be so much easier to deal with someone else's problems than to deal with my own. He was still looking at the car, but I knew that he was fully focused on me.

It was tingly.

I loved it.

"Tomorrow night, we pull the motor out and begin to figure out what needs to happen to make this beauty purr again." I was struck by his tone, by his hands lovingly running over the motor.

His hands running lovingly over me.

"So, that's what we do to the car. How do we fix my motor?" He turned his head and smiled slightly.

"Your motor, Jane is coming along quite nicely if tonight's test spin was any indication." My turn to smile.

"You mean that beautiful suicide move where I went from zero to sixty in less than ten seconds against the wall tonight?"

"Oh, yes. That was truly…remarkable." I was sweating now, between my breasts, on the backs of my knees as thoughts of zombies and baggage got shoved aside for remembrances of high revolutions and purring motors that lived beneath flesh shells. Somewhere I realized that letting him affect me this way was a sign of how much I was growing to trust him.

That should have scared me.

Any trust I had ever given had been weaponized and turned back on me.

I was not scared. I was not scared because he had never let me down.

"Let's go in if we are done here for the night."

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We talked late into the night. Later than I had planned but he captivated me. As he talked of his life as a vampire the places he had been and the things he had seen I began to massage his feet. We were on my new bed laying side by side, his head at my feet and so it was easy to reach out and touch him. The way he purred under my touch only made me want to do it more. As he talked my body shifted and I worked my way up his legs. He let me turn him over so I could work his body as he had mine the night before. He had shown me the way and so, as I had from the beginning I followed.

I moved up to straddle his hips, all the better to massage his back and shoulders, my dear, I thought as he moaned softly and stopped talking as I worked his muscles.

"This should not feel so good, Jane," he said softly in the quiet dark of my room. There were only a couple of candles lit and they cast shadows over everything in the room.

"Why?"

"Because I don't ache. I am as I was a thousand years ago. I don't tire. My muscles don't strain."

"So, you don't ever feel weak?"

"Only when I have not fed for an extended time."

"And you fed tonight," I said, digging deeply with my thumbs into his shoulder blades, traces the edges of his frame adoringly.

"I fed extremely well tonight, Jane. When you do what you do, it's like I am tasting dozens at once. I have never experienced anything like it." He stopped then and turned his head toward me a concerned look on his face. "Have you been eating, Jane? There is no food here and it just occurred to me that I have not seen you eat these past two nights."

I stopped then. He was right. I had not thought about food since I had come to see him at Wonderland the night of our arrangement. I had coffee, and some water, but other than that, I had not been hungry.

What the fuck? I was always hungry! I stopped massaging him and slide off to lay beside him. He propped himself up on one arm and faced me, giving me a piercing look. I thought back.

"When I suggested we go out to eat tonight, I was hungry." He waited. "And when we got to the club and I opened myself up I felt so much more than I had before. I remember thinking that all the energy flowed so much better now that you had opened all the closed doors inside me." I stopped there, chasing my thoughts.

"Are you still hungry, Jane?" I shook my head.

"Not since I felt the energy of the club. Before…before I fed you…I think I maybe fed myself."

"You fed on the energy that I can taste in your blood?"

"I think so, yes." I looked at him, knowing he could see the fear on my face no matter how poor the lighting from the candles. "What does it mean, Eric?" He smoothed my hair back, smiling a little sadly.

"You told me when we met that you were a vampire, that we all feed on something. Perhaps, you feed on the energy you feel and now that you are able to open up and embrace that more fully you are satisfying the true hunger that you have never been able to address before."

"That's a lot of words for you to tell me that I am not human."

"You know this already. You are different. You have accepted that, maybe not all the way, but more than you have been able to accept it before now." I thought about what he was suggesting and felt my gears stripping. There was only one thing to ask next.

"What am I?" He pulled me closer to him.

"Mine." I loved that answer. He could say it forever and I would love it every time.

Every fucking time.

"If I am not human, then, in addition to being yours, what am I?" He looked at me intently, in that way he had that made me melt. His hand came up to cup my cheek.

"I can tell you two things, Jane." My eyes grew bigger as I feared what might come next. "First, it doesn't matter to me. You are mine, you are now, you will be when we find the label that you seem to need." He kissed me softly then, and I felt safer and more secure than I ever had before.

"And the second thing?"

"I am fairly certain that you are not…a unicorn." His lips twitched then. I couldn't help it. I laughed, the tension passing out of me, as he had no doubt intended. When I was done laughing he tucked me in and snuggled me as I felt my eyes grow heavy. "Sleep now, you have to be up early to meet with Parker."

"Fer sure!" I said, and started giggling again. That reminded me to set my clock and when I snuggled back into him he pulled me close.

"Something you want to tell me, Valley Girl?" he whispered in my hair, and I snorted. It felt so good to understood. To be gotten. It was like magic. Everything about Eric was magic to me.

"Just that I love you." I threaded my fingers through his and pulled his arm tighter around me. I drifted off to sleep wondering if he felt it, too or if I was lost in this emotion all by myself.

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_When you see Parker ask him about chi._

The voices in my head woke me just as the clock started to go off. I was alone in the bed but found the note as soon as the annoying shrill of the alarm clock was shut off.

_**I will seek out advice on what we have seen and discussed. If I come tonight it will be late. Rest well and I will see you tomorrow night at the latest. We still have much to do, my Jane.**_

_**Eric**_

My Jane.

Stupid girly heart. I took it and me to the shower and tried to wipe the dipshit smile off my face.

My Jane.

It was the first time I could recall ever being happy about being me.

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I popped my grape flavored Hubba Bubba bubblegum in Parker's face when he opened the door at six sharp. He took a deep breath, calmed himself and greeted me. "Good morning, Jane."

"Oh, my, God! Like totally, mornin', Parker!" I chirped back, chomping my gum in THE most annoying way I could. He squared his shoulders.

"No gum allowed in my studio, Jane." I twisted my hair, blew another bubble and thought about whining. I decided to let him have his one and spit my gum out before entering. It was early and I was sure that I would find another way to get even for the punishment that I knew was ahead of me.

"Go sit on the mat and meditate for fifteen minutes, like we discussed at your last visit." I had worn my workout gear so I dropped my bag to the floor and sat down to clear my mind. "Think of the moves and the forms that I showed you and how your body felt as you went through them. Clear your mind of all but the forms and move through them slowly in your thoughts as we did with your body."

I had thought it would be hard. My mind was never quiet. There was always the music and a million thoughts racing through at any moment. Strangely though, once I took a couple of deep breaths my mind cleared and my body relaxed completely. I saw myself in my mind practicing the forms, as though I were really doing the motions and watching my body from outside.

As I watched I could see a light all around my body that grew bright and dim in alternate waves depending on which move I was doing. It looked like I was dancing and when I allowed the universal music to flow through my now quiet mind it laid a soundtrack to the forms that reinforced the image of dance moves. Some less and more intricate form of ballet or modern dance.

I was the audience and the dancer as I moved slowly entrancing myself, falling deeper into the self-induced hypnosis. Slowly, I turned to myself and said, "When you see Parker ask him about chi." I jumped, startled and opened my eyes to see Parker kneeling in front of me his eyes wide with terror as he stared at me. He fell back, landing on his ass when my eyes jerked open suddenly.

"W-What the fuck was that?" he asked still staring at me in abject terror.

I wished I still had my gum to pop. It would have bought me some time to stall and it would have pissed him off and distracted him. "What was what?" I asked in my best Valley Girl voice, twisting my pony tail and trying to look innocent and confused. His nostrils flared. I prayed for a distraction. Not to my God, he had abandoned me long ago. I prayed to Eric's Norse pantheon for a distraction.

_Odin, if you're out there, I could use a hand here._

From outside came a loud screeching of tires and a thud, followed by a car horn blaring loudly. I was impressed enough that later on my Viking and I were going to do some serious talking.

I jumped to my feet and ran to the door, opening it and continuing out onto the street toward the sound. About a half a block down the street I saw the car stopped and the drivers head on the steering wheel making the horn blare. On the road in front of the car was a body. I picked up speed and heard Parker gaining behind me. Being in much better shape he passed me and stopped at the car pulling the driver off the horn and checking his pulse. I kept moving toward the man on the ground.

Falling to my knees beside him I gently rolled him over and check for a pulse. There was none. A second later Parker was beside me, I shook my head indicating that we were too late to help him and Parker reached out to place his hand on my shoulder in a comforting gesture before he remembered whatever had scared the shit out of him a few minutes before and he pulled back at the last minute. I could see the terror in his eyes again.

"I'll go call for help," he said turning and leaving me there. I was glad. I was so fucking rattled I needed a minute to myself. I was rattled because of what had happened in the studio and I was also rattled because when I turned over the man in the road I recognized him.

He was the zombie I had seen the night before at Isis.


	12. A Dead Man's Pockets

**The Psychic- A Dead Man's Pockets**

I picked a dead man's pockets while I waited for the police and EMT's to arrive. It seemed easier than figuring out how I had managed to scare the shit out of full grown Werewolf.

The dead man, was, _had been_, Chad Allen, 35 years old lives at 1616 Mockingjay Way, Shreveport.

_Lived._

I glanced at his hand, and saw a gold band there. I couldn't remember if it had been there last night. Flipping through the pictures I found a nice one of him, his wife and their kid, a boy about 5.

So, not the wife with him last night at Isis.

I tucked his wallet back in his pocket and sat back just Parker returned and I could hear the sirens coming closer. He kneeled beside me, still keeping his distance and asked if I was ok."

"Totally," I said, sounding anything but. I watched the strings shift around him as he tried to figure out his next move.

In one he asked me why I glowed when I was meditating. I tried to deflect his question but he would not back off. He called Eric that night and terminated my training with no explanation. I had almost moved on to the next thread when I something caught my mind and I pushed further into this one.

Parker was in a bar talking to some other large hairy attractive men_, more Werefolk,_ I thought as I listened. "The dumb bitch glowed all over. I know she belonged to Northman, but there was something about her…" he went on, shoving more booze in his face and I saw another Were across the room listening.

My spidey sense tingled.

I needed to know who that was and what was happening there. I had jumped threads when I was chasing Jonas and Andre, could I do it now?

I took a breath and willed myself across the dark bar to the Were in the corner and slid into his energy, following his thread to a phone call.

"Let me speak to Edgington, I think I have found something for his collection." I heard a sickly sweet accent come on the line and then following deeper I saw Edgington come to town and take me from Eric.

"What are you, my dear?" he dripped in my ear as he licked his lips and ran his hands over my body, like he owned me now. I could not feel myself in that moment, only him, but I knew what I was feeling.

If he hurt Eric, I would be feeling all the thousands of ways I planned to make him pay.

But this was only one possibility.

There were several others around Parker and I was out of time. Just as the ambulance arrived I physically moved off to the side while mentally I went back for another string.

I asked Parker about chi. Light dawned in his eyes and he told me that chi was the life force that surrounded all things, that it connected all things. Ancient Chinese philosophers believed that the energy flowed around and through the body forming a cohesive and functioning unit. They believed that by understanding its rhythm and flow they could guide a person's chi, restoring balance and healing.

"Mencius taught that a kind of chi that might be characterized as an individual's vital energies. This chi was necessary to activity, and it could be controlled by a well-integrated willpower. When properly nurtured, this chi was said to be capable of extending beyond the human body to reach throughout the universe.

"It could also be augmented by means of careful exercise of one's moral capacities. On the other hand, the chi of an individual could be degraded by adverse external forces that succeed in operating on that individual."

He said, "Human beings are born with an accumulation of chi_, _of life. When chi dissipates there is death.

"Above all else he believed that there is one chi that connects and pervades everything in this world and beyond."

In this thread I had listened to him as I had watched. I saw myself speak now.

"You think what you saw was my chi?" He shook his head, looking back at me in wonder more than fear now.

"No, I think I glimpsed the chi that connects everything in this world."

I needed more time in this thread.

I needed some time at the fucking library to look up all the shit Parker had just rattled off like he had been saving it and I was his rainy day.

I needed to look at that third thread.

As the cop approached to get my statement I weaved and reached out before sitting down hard on the sidewalk. He hurried toward me. "Are you ok, Miss?"

"I…Could I get some water?" I hated playing the weak Southern Belle in distress card, but I needed some more time. Time where I was not being asked a bunch of fucking questions that were taking me further from information and revelations rather than closer to them.

Mentally, I reached out for the third string of possibility expecting to see some variation of Parker as I had in the first two. All I saw was myself. The image was fading in and out, as though this possible future depended on some choice likely but yet to be made.

_Very good little one. _

Oh, great, the voices in my head lived in this thread. Rather than let the internal dialog distract me I focused on what I was seeing.

Just as this morning I was going through the karate forms that Parker had taught me, and I was glowing. What was new though was that now I could see the glow around me was being fed from outside. Following a string of energy found myself back at Isis surrounded by dancers. I raised my arms and saw myself reach out and open up just as I had done the night before, but now I could see them rushing into me. Their energy feeding mine.

Vision me dropped her head back in ecstasy as she moved her body, her hips writhing to the music as she fed, the beat of the music in sync with the pulsations of energy, of chi as it flowed around me. It was like making love to myself in public. Any second now I expected to see my hand travel down and touch myself.

Fuck, I was so caught up, _I_ wanted to see it.

_Just take a little_, the voice in my head whispered, but I knew not if it was to me or to her.

_What the fuck am I? _

_Wrong question._

_How do I get here?_

_Right question._

I waited for me. I thought for sure that an answer was owed to me now. Maybe it was, but that didn't mean I was going to get it. Fuck all, the world outside was not a fair place. It was really seriously fucked up and unfair that I couldn't get some goddamned equanimity in my own head.

I was taking a mental breath to peel back the final veneer of sanity and yell at my vision self when I saw it. A golden thread. It moved around me and rather than waste another second I grabbed it and followed it.

I followed it right back to the street I was standing on.

I followed it right back to the street that I was standing on where Chad Allen had just died.

I was glad I was sitting down.

_You have been given nothing that you are not equipped to handle. The universe doesn't work that way. Now, process what you have seen and get off your ass and on your feet._

_If there is time for doubt and whining it will be later. To survive you must use your gifts and move. _

I sat there, out of shock. Out of stubbornness. Out of just down right pissed-offedness.

_You are standing in traffic looking at the sun. Move Jane. Move before you are blind or dead._

_MOVE!_

My physical body jumped just as the cop returned with my water. A dozen questions later I was back in Parker's studio. I left the Valley Girl Vampire Pet outside and let him meet Jane Black for the first time.

"What can you tell me about, chi?"

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I listened to Parker tell me what I had already heard and tried to figure out what had happened in the third string.

There was so fucking much.

Threads of what will be.

Threads of what could be.

I fed on chi.

I fed on life force.

I fed on everything's life force.

I fed on everyone.

I really enjoyed feeding on everyone.

I enjoyed it a lot.

That enjoyment led back to the moment on the street. Directly back to that moment. It led back to a choice I made on that street.

I would become fully what I am because the zombie, Chad Allen, had died outside my karate studio at six in the morning, the night after I had seen him a club and tasted him.

Parker was coming to the end of his speech on Mencius, so I asked him to jot down some books for me and promised to head to the library. He looked at me intently as he handed me the note. "Two days ago, I wouldn't have thought you knew what a library was, let alone how to read. Why the fake out, Jane?"

"I didn't know I could trust you." I opened my mind then and looked at the thread where he inadvertently gave me up to the Vampire King of Mississippi glitch and fade out. What was left was a serious conversation that he was going to have with Eric on keeping his fucking mouth shut and doing his job for a handsome bonus.

"And what's different now?"

"Now I do." He looked at me, still rattled but starting to believe that what he had seen was more a manifestation of _his_ power than _mine_. He had wanted to reach a level to perceive chi for a very long time now.

And that was what saved me from being cast out in dank Were bars. He would be more cautious with his own self-revelation than he would ever be with anyone else's.

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After a stop at the library I headed home. We had not gotten back to my work out, so once I arrived home I went to my empty living room and sat down to meditate, focusing on the moves and forms that I was supposed to be practicing while I picked a dead man's pockets.

As before, I was outside myself watching me move. Watching me glow. There was such an incredible sense of peace in those movements, in making them, in feeling the muscles flex and extend, in feeling the energy build and wane.

As the light waned I felt hunger. Deep, driving, demanding hunger. The Nth degree of the sensation that once I had tried to satisfy with chips and cookies, only to wind up feeling as though I had never eaten anything at all. The hunger that had been such a helpful assistant in reaching a size sixteen.

My eyes popped open seeking a clock. Six hours before the clubs open. Six hours to mass snackage. No way was I waiting six hours. I was starving! Slowly standing and trying to think of places that people congregated at one in the afternoon I thought of grocery stores.

I was in the car minutes later.

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I saw him up front by the melons. He called to me, I swear I could feel him. He was so happy that the closer I got him the more I had to fight the urge to dance a jig right there. Not thinking I reached my hand out toward him and I saw an energy thread leave him and come to me, wrapping itself around my arm, climbing up like a vine, but still connected to him.

The end presented itself to my lips and gave a tug like it was a straw and got…fuck me…power…finger…light socket…mind…blown! Waves of pleasure and joy pulsing through me. Pounding through me.

I grabbed my cart to stay upright and let the string go, riding the highest fucking high I had ever had, hands down. I let the cart go and turned to head back out of the store to my 'Stang. I wanted the wind in my hair, my foot in the floor. I wanted to fly.

I wanted to dance, and do other things that since Eric was asleep I could only do myself, at least until he showed up.

I had forgotten that he would be late.

I had forgotten that we were supposed to talk about the man who was now dead.

I had forgotten about everything but the buzz in my veins and throbbing between my thighs.

I was so intent on the energy and joy coursing through my veins I missed the sound of the sirens growing closer as I pulled out of the parking lot and headed home.

I wouldn't know that I had killed him until the next morning.

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If speed was flying confidence condensed into pill form, chi was that times infinity. No hunger, no doubt, no fear. I could feel every cell in my body and it was aching. I was aching.

I don't remember driving home, but when I got there I wanted to dance. I pulled out the Eurythmics and turned _Here Comes the Rain Again_ up to full volume and gave myself over to the lyrics and the beat.

I danced.

I danced around the empty rooms, and I danced into my bedroom. I danced onto my bed, and I danced until I time stopped. Everything stopped. Over and over I started the record and over and over I surrendered to the song.

I could feel the rain on my skin, tingling.

I could feel the meaning of the words like they were pouring out of me and not pounding into me.

I danced until Eric was in the middle of my bedroom watching me move, listening to me sing. I moved toward him like a compass to true north. I broke from the lyrics.

"I need you," I said reaching for his hand. He let me pull him close and listened as I sang and moved against him, looking into his eyes, wanting him to feel the beat like I did.

_Here it comes again. Here it comes again. I want to talk like lovers do._

I knew then what I had to do to let him feel it, too. Dropping his hands I went to start the record again, because I wanted it to rain his head, too. As the first strings hit I was back in his arms. "Drink." I pulled him down. One pull and he shivered in my arms. Moaning.

_Here comes the rain again, falling on my head like a memory, falling on my head like a new emotion…_

"What…the…fuck…is…THAT?" he moaned in my ear as I rubbed my body against him.

"Me," I whispered, closing my eyes, closing on his lips. Our kisses before had been about learning the way of each other's secret paths. This kiss was about burning. Burning energy. Burning passion. Burning desire. I was burning for him, and now that he had tasted me he was burning, too.

Some part of me felt gratified that I had transferred the burn to him. Part of me felt afraid when he ripped the clothes from my body and turned me around. I heard his zipper come down and then I felt him pushing into me. I had been wet and ready since I could remember and feeling him slide home, full of me, making me full of him completed the circuit that had been dead heading all afternoon inside me.

I was now a full loop.

I was on full loop and when he started to move I came hard from the first couple of thrusts howling his name as Annie Lenox told me how to dive into his ocean. His hands come up to cup my breasts, twisting my nipples in his fingers as he claimed me, and came in for another drink never slowing his pace.

I swear when his fangs sank in I could see the chi around us light up pulsing and pounding in time to thrusts of our bodies. Until that moment he had led, he had set the pace and he had been gentle.

I felt a moments regret that I could not in this moment show him the same. It was beyond me to be kind.

When his fangs left my neck I pulled off him and turned, pushing his roughly to floor. I followed him down ripping is shirt open as he had mine and tugging his jeans off his hips. His fangs were still down, his mouth still bloody like his eyes. He wanted to drink all me. I wanted him to.

When I slid him back into me as deep as he would go his hands came to my hips and his eyes rolled back in ecstasy. He was moving. He was moving me. The world was crashing in around us.

_I want to walk in the open wind. I want to talk like lovers do. I want to dive into your ocean._

It was raining with us both.

He sat up and pulled me to him, kissing me as I screamed my orgasm down his throat pulling him over the edge with me. He came apart in my arms. He came undone inside me and as he fell back he pulled me with him.

Slowly my senses returned to a normal level. To a pre-grocery store level and I curled into him like a satisfied kitten, squeezing him with my thighs, my arms, my internal muscles still wrapped around his slowly softening cock.

His hands traveled up and down my back, soothing me. Soothing him.

The world was slipping away and I was about to either sleep or drift into eternity complete and satisfied when he whispered in my ear.

"So, what did you do today, my Jane?"

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_Special Thanks to The Eurythmics and Here Comes The Rain Again. One of my favorite all time songs from the 80's. :)_


	13. Ordinary People

**The Psychic- Ordinary People**

I was crashing when Eric tried to talk me. The higher the high, the lower the low. Every addict knew that. I had burned brighter than the sun, so I was crashing into the darkest night. Sensing my state my lover took to me to bed and tucked me in, curling around me. His words following me down.

"When I wake I want to know what happened."

I hoped I would know myself by then.

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I awoke late the next afternoon, my head was clear, my muscles were still tired but not refusing to move as they had a few days before. After a hot shower I l slipped out and bought the paper to see what else I could learn about the zombie Chad Allen. I was at the kitchen counter sipping coffee when I found the story.

_**Chad Allen, 35, of Mockingjay Way died early yesterday when he was hit by a car in downtown Shreveport. Chad was an employee of Valhalla Industries, a land management company also located in Shreveport. He is survived by his wife Susan and his four year old son Sean who attends the Brivasant Pre-School. He was an active church member, and performed a variety of community service work in his off time. The accident is still under investigation, but no foul play is suspected at this time.**_

_Does the chick at Isis count as community service?_

I was just about to lay the paper down when something caught my eye.

_**Mark Rowsey, 30, lifetime resident of Shreveport died yesterday afternoon in Jones Grocery. Witnesses say he was fine and then suddenly he collapsed in the produce section, clasping his chest. The paramedics pronounced him dead on the scene. Shreveport police have contacted his nearest of kin and when we reached out for comment his mother told this reporter that Mark had just proposed to his longtime girlfriend Teresa and they had been looking forward to an early fall wedding. **_

I knew I had done that. I had been drawn to his joy and I had drained of his life force. If Parker was right, I had taken all his chi. I had killed Mark Rowsey as surely as if I had put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger. I stood there and let that thought swirl around in my mind for a while.

The idea of killing was not a new one to me. I thought of killing my mother's boyfriend. I had wanted to kill my mother's boyfriend. He had left about a week before I would have screwed up the courage to free myself in the only way I could see to do it. I had felt a sense of relief and disappointment at his departure before I had crossed the line that could not uncrossed. It was that plan, those moments that I thought of as I stood there.

I had wanted him to hurt as he had hurt me. I had wanted him to suffer as I had suffered. I wanted vengeance. Those feelings had tasted of justice and of righteousness as I planned to poison him, stab him, knock him unconscious and then burn the house to the ground. I had felt powerful with my secret plans. I didn't feel righteous or powerful as I thought of the happy man I had carelessly ended yesterday afternoon in front of the cantaloupes.

I knew that I should have felt shame, but I didn't. I felt remorse for his death, but it had been an accident. I knew what it was to plan the end of another life, and that had not been what I was doing yesterday. I had lost control, and now I knew what that meant. I wished I could have learned that another way but I could not undo what had been done. I could only do better next time.

_Next time?_

Yes, next time. Now that I had felt it, learned what it was that I needed, what it was I was made to do, there would be a next time. I would be hungry again. I would feed again. I would not kill again, unless I meant to. Now that I could see what was coming I could prepare for it, prevent it from happening. That was how I lived. How I did things. This was another thing I would do.

I had been so lost in my thoughts that I did not realize the sun had set and that darkness had fallen. Eric's voice from the doorway broke my reverie and for the first time I felt fear.

What if he found what I had done unforgivable?

"Now, tell me what happened yesterday, Jane." I looked at him in the shadowy room and knew that I would never lie to him, even if he cast me out, I would never betray his trust in me. I took a deep breath and reached for the light switch beside the sink, motioning him over to me and the newspaper I told him my story and waited to see if this would be the end of the glorious life that I had found for myself less than a week ago.

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Silence fell when I finished speaking. I had started with the incident at Parker's studio and covered everything right up to finding the story in the paper about Mark Rowsey. I had stopped there, not wanting to go through my feelings on the subject because my feelings were not what concerned me. Eric's feelings were what concerned me. I dropped my head, clenched my muscles and waited for what would surely come next, my banishment from the life of Eric Northman. When I saw him reach for me I flinched. He stopped. I glanced up at his face while keeping my head down and rather than anger what I saw there was compassion. He moved again, slowly pulling me into his arms and resting his chin on my head.

"When I was made vampire and I fed for the first time I killed, too, my Jane." He started rubbing my back soothingly as he continued. "I knew I should stop but I could not find the strength to make it so. The blood, it tasted so good, and I was so hungry that I could not make myself stop and before I knew it, it was too late."

"What happened?" I whispered into his chest, letting my arms come up around him now, offering comfort as well as receiving it.

"I buried the body, and promised myself I would not do it again."

"And did you?"

"Many times."

"Because you couldn't control it?" I hugged him tighter.

"That and sometimes I just didn't care."

"What does that mean?" He sighed then and held me a little tighter.

"It's a long story that I do not wish to tell this night, just know that you are not alone in what you are facing now. How do you feel about all this, my Jane?"

"I, too, promised that I wouldn't let it happen again." He chuckled softly as he continued to stroke my back.

"And do you think yourself to be so strong that you can stop it?" I hesitated, needing to say this right. I pulled back to look in his eyes still finding only acceptance there, and that of all the things I had seen and done recently surprised me more than any of them.

"No. It's not about strength. It's about knowing your limits and accepting them. I told you I used drugs, alcohol and food to punish myself for surviving, to survive what I had seen in my life. That was truth. I am an addict, and this chi thing is just one more thing that I will likely be addicted to, because drinking his joy in that new way was so fucking powerful it made everything else I had ever done seem like pale shadow. It made me full and whole for a time in a way like nothing else ever has!

"But I don't have to feed that way. I don't have to lose control. I don't have to have that give me strength. I can feed on crowds like I showed you, like I told you the night we met. I don't have to take everything I need from one person, I don't need to feel that powerful."

"And where will you get your strength from, if not from feeding?" His hands came up to cup my face then, his eyes looking for the truth in mine. I put mine over his, caressing them softly.

"From you, Eric. From the woman you see when you look at me. From trying to become that woman for you." He smiled slightly. Around him the music hit dissonance and I saw his threads show me his memories of all the terrible things he did not want to speak of this night. I closed my mind refusing to take him in this way, focusing on the being who stood before and not the one he had been on his journey to me. It sounds hard, but it was easier than you might think.

All I had to do was think of all the things I had been and how I did not want them to color his vision of me in this time and in this place. My life was but a blink of his immortal eye but there was enough there to show me that I could do no less for him than I would ask in return.

"You think that is funny because you have killed so many, and that of all people I am swearing to not do the same to you." He nodded slightly frowning. "You have been many things, but to me here and now you have given me a glimpse of what I can be, and that matters more than anything else." He looked at me a long time and then nodded accepting my words. I felt him fight his memories, like they threatened to sweep him away and I wondered if I would ever be as strong as he was, and I prayed it would be so because nothing less would make me worthy of him.

"Were you able to find out anything from your sources about what I might be?" I asked curious now but also trying to redirect his thoughts onto something other his past.

"No. I think you found out more about how you work than I did. There are a few things I want to check out and I will continue to look into it, but nothing that is helpful to us at this time."

I smiled at him then, "So, I am working for you, what can I do in the meantime to be of service to you?" Sighing he glanced at the newspaper.

"I would like you to go to my business tomorrow and have a look around. I will have you set up with security to get in as my assistant."

"You want me to go Wonderland tomorrow while you rest?"

"No, I want you to go to Valhalla Industries as Mr. Valhalla's personal assistant and see what you can find."

"You…you own Valhalla Industries? Chad Allen worked for you?"

"Yes, though I did not know it when we saw him at Isis. I am rarely there, and never in the day, for obvious reasons." My mind was racing. The zombie worked for Eric. Could that really be a coincidence?

"Does Andre know about Valhalla?"

"Yes, I have to pay the Queen a portion of profits from all my businesses." He stopped then and looked at me sharply. "Do you think there is a connection there?"

"I don't know, but he was looking into all your businesses for the Queen to help her figure out if she could make you Sheriff. If he knew then he has been there as well." He thought that over for a few minutes.

"You must be on your guard then, Jane. There could be others glamoured to report Andre on my dealings. It might not be safe for you to go as my assistant."

"Is there anyone else I can pose as that would give me access to go in and wander around Valhalla?" He thought a moment.

"How are you at making sandwiches?" The look on my face must have been priceless.

32XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX23

I met Parker at six and did my three hour work out. As I had seen in his thread Eric had offered him a huge bonus to continue training me and keep his mouth shut. The lesson had went smoothly and I was out and on my way to the sandwich shop that served Valhalla Industries. Eric had left last night glamour the owner into hiring me and I was on a training run with Sherry the usual sandwich girl who serviced the business.

We had agreed my back story would be that I was saving money for college while I lived with my Uncle taking care of him. The story had made me smile more than once after we came up with it. It amused me endlessly for some reason picturing myself taking care of Uncle Eric, probably because he was the one who spent so much time taking care of me.

"So, why did Rudolph hire you again, Janet?" Sherry asked as we approached the tall glass doors that led to Valhalla. "I mean, nothing personal, but I got this route down cold. I don't really need the help." Or to split the tips. She didn't say it but she didn't need to. It was clear that she felt I was infringing on her territory.

"Well, he's an old friend of my Uncle Eric. He mentioned he was thinking of expanding and picking up a few new lunch runs, and my Uncle thought it would be a great opportunity for to pick up some cash for school this fall."

"Oh, so you won't be staying then?" She sounded positively pleased to know I was a short timer. I looked at her out of the corner of my eye and took in the fact that she was a little over dressed and done up to be delivering lunch. It clicked then. She had a sweetie here, or she was trying to land one and she did not want to be taken off this route. Reassuring her that her territory was safe from Janet the lunch delivery girl would be the quickest way to get her off my back.

"No, I have classes in a couple of months, and I think that Rudolph plans to send me to the new places once I am done training with you." She almost sighed with relief as we opened the doors and wheeled in the cart full of drinks and sandwiches. I was hit with a wave of cool air in the face as we rolled up to reception and were given visitors passes and waved through. I was practically invisible. Eric was a lot of things, and genius ranked high on the list.

"Well, it ain't rocket science. You make the sandwiches and then you roll the cart around and sell them. Even you should be able to figure out pretty quick." I decided to not take the bait. I could care less what she thought of Janet. It was Jane who mattered and she was here for Eric.

As we rolled the cart around I opened my mind and listened. I could see and hear the threads around me all flowing in harmony. I heard Sherry's would be honey coming before she did. He liked her. It was all over him and his threads. While they were busy pretending that they weren't trying to get busy I wandered a short distance away and tried to concentrate harder on listening.

It was then I noticed that something was not quite right.

The music was still playing harmoniously but there was a dead beat in the middle of it. To my minds ear it sounded like an echo falling off. I closed my eyes and tried to follow the sound to the fall off point. I didn't realize that I was moving until I felt myself bump into someone. As soon as we touched the music stopped and I felt the same icy cold I had at Isis when I bumped into Chad Allen on the stairs.

"Hey, little lady, you might want to watch where you are going." My eyes jerked open and I took in the man before me. Just like with Chad he looked fine. He was quite handsome, and had a twinkle in his eye as he reached toward me to steady me before I fell. Instinctively, I jerked back and then I felt another set of icy hands grab my arm. I whirled around and this time found myself facing a woman who looked a little put out, but not angry at my complete lack of grace.

"Brad, you're scaring her!" the woman chided, sounding just a little bit like she might enjoy Brad scaring me, or anyone for that matter. Brad laughed then, and he and the woman continued on toward Sherry and the lunch cart, chatting casually.

Chatting like they were everyday ordinary people.

Chatting like they weren't zombies.


	14. Priceless

**The Psychic- Priceless**

"I saw two more zombies before I left at the end of the lunch run, Eric." We were sitting on my new sexy leather sofa that I had purchased that afternoon. I was sitting with my right leg tucked underneath me, facing him so I could impress upon him my concern at this turn of events.

I was almost disturbed enough that I wasn't thinking how much I wanted to touch him, wanted him to touch me.

Almost.

If we are going _Dawn of the Dead_ here there is no one I would rather be trapped with than Eric Northman.

"You keep calling them 'zombies'?" I shrugged.

"I don't know what else to call them. They have no futures. There are no possibilities for them to choose. They are dead inside."

"Yet, they walk and talk and in every other way appear to be alive?"

"As far as I can tell." He looked at me and I sighed. "I showed you how they were different with Chad at Isis that night. When I fed from him and you tasted it in my blood. I know that is not seeing it the same as I do, but you had to feel the difference. You did, right?" He nodded.

"Yes, I felt the difference. There was almost no life in the blood I took that night."

"No life?"

"That isn't quite accurate, he hesitated searching. He cast his eyes around the room, and landed on the books that I had taken from the library. "You told me that you thought you were feeding on chi." I had talked to him about all of it, hoping he could help me understand what was happening. "So, let's go with that. You have your own chi, your own life force and when I feed from you I sense that life in your blood." He took my hand then, rubbing the back with his thumb in an absent minded way as he continued.

"So, when you feed on others chi, and I taste you then, it's still your blood, but it's so much more ALIVE! It's so much more powerful! It's like I am feeding on dozens of people all at once when I sip your blood after feeding."

"Makes as much sense as any of the rest of this does," I said smiling crookedly at him and sliding closer to him, practically climbing into his as he went on.

"If we go with the idea that your body, your blood can absorb the life force of others, then we have to assume that you could also sense the absence of chi." I felt my eyes grow large. "That if you tried to absorb this negative energy, it could swallow your own life force." He stopped and let than sink in. I took a breath and then he went on. "You said that when they touched you it felt like being cut with cold icy shards?"

"Yes, it hurts."

"And there is no music?"

"It is the antithesis of the music. It swallows the music. Like…a black hole swallows light." He was silent a moment and then he pulled me the small remaining distance onto his lap, running his hands through my hair, staring intently into my eyes.

"Don't feed from the ones you call 'zombies', Jane."

"No _problemo_," I told him, and it really wouldn't' t be. "What do you think would happen if I did though?"

"Death, maybe." I shivered in his arms, and he pulled me close as he went on softly, cupping the back of my head. "If what we suppose is true, then feeding from a 'zombie' would absorb your own chi and that might kill you, Jane."

"No_ mana y mano_ with a zombie, got it," I whispered into his neck, squeezing him back just as tight as he was holding me for just a minute before sitting back and looking him in his very serious blue eyes. "How can I help now?" His hands rubbed my back and I started to tingle all over, reality and the weirdness of zombies falling away as I moved on to much more pleasant things in his arms.

"What am I like to you, Jane?"

"Huh?" my brow furrowed as I struggled to focus on his question and not his oh so kissable lips that I had been zeroing in on without even realizing it.

"Have you fed from me?" I shook my head.

"No. I have seen your threads and read your past and future in them but I have not fed from you."

"You don't think it would be like Chad and the others?" I crossed my arms behind his neck and wriggled a little closer, a little deeper into his lap.

"No, I know it's nothing like that." His face scrunched up a moment and then his mask slipped back in place that I had seen that first night at Wonderland.

"But, I am technically undead. Wouldn't that make me the same as a 'zombie' as you say?"

"Damned if I know. I can only tell you that every time I allowed myself to look there were strings and music around you."

"'Allowed yourself to look'?"

"I stopped looking at them unless you ask me to after we made our arrangement." He looked at me intently then.

"Why?" I shrugged again, arms still around his neck.

"If you wanted me to know you would tell me."

"You trust me?" I smiled this time, but the answer was still the same.

"No. I respect you though, and that is why." He hesitated and I could tell her wanted to talk about that some more but he shook his beautiful head and forced himself back on topic.

"Feed from me, Jane." My stomach knotted itself up.

"NO!" He shook me gently.

"Yes! I want to see what it feels like." I was still shaking my head. No way I was doing this. No way in hell! "I feed from you!" he was insistent that I take a drink of him.

"Yeah, but I might kill you!"

"I might kill you, " he said quietly, leaning forward and laying his forehead against mine. "Just a little, please."

"Why? What are we gonna learn from me doing this?" He considered a moment.

"If we knew we wouldn't need to do it." Smartass. "We know that you can sustain me." I nodded, "This would tell us if I can sustain you." If I could have crawled inside his skin in that moment I still would not have been able to get close enough. My skin broke out in goose bumps. He glanced down at my arms. "You're surprised?"

"And really , really fucking turned on," I gasped as I leaned in to kiss him like I had been wanting to do since Noah stumbled off the boat. Right there in his arms I felt like I could not open myself up enough to get close enough to hold myself together. My legs opened further around his hips, placing him right where I wanted to feel him in that moment, despite the barrier of our clothes, he felt so unbelievably perfect there. My arms pulled him tighter to him, pressing my chest to his, protecting him, covering him with everything I was, everything I had.

Since the moment I met him I had been changing. My thoughts becoming more organized, my insides finally settling down, calming down. For the first time in my life I was feeling the way I thought a real person was supposed to feel.

That realization swept through me and I I knew in that moment that I would die for Eric Northman. It clicked into my soul like the tumblers of a lock. It resonated in my body and I responded by arching into him even more, and grinding down against his hardness that was steadily growing and growing harder.

If I stopped to think about much I enjoyed sex with him and how I had never believed I could ever trust a man to be that intimate with him, I would confuse myself and wreck the bicycle I was determined to ride now. If I thought about how it all worked, it would suddenly stop working.

Rather than risk losing my balance, mental or physical, I stopped thinking. Just shut the door on all the reasons why this shouldn't be happening, couldn't be happening for me, to me, with me. Instead, I just let it happen.

When he broke the kiss and moved to my neck, I could feel his fangs scrape my skin lightly and I moaned, hyper-sensitized to his touch and his words I nearly came right there in his arms, my clothes still on. It felt exquisite. He felt exquisite. We felt exquisite.

As he kissed my neck lovingly preparing me for his bite, I opened my mind and grabbed on to the music that was Eric Northman in ecstasy. It had a deep tone to it, not unlike his voice, there were drums, and they picked up speed to match his passion, to echo his need. There was something not unlike a low slow saxophone that traveled the chords of his torrid nature.

Yes, jazz. Cool and hot all at once and all over the place, order in the chaos.

Eric Northman was like jazz.

My own joy rose another notch at recognizing this fabulous creature in my arms and I turned even deeper into him, physically, emotionally, and I reached out as I had in the grocery store for Mark Rowsey. Mark's threads has been golden in color when I took one and sipped it like a straw, taking all his joy, accidentally taking his life. Eric's were rose in color. The warm color matched the feeling he had created in me, and I hoped as I pulled it to me to sip that I had done the same in him.

That I had made him feel this affection. That I had made him feel this love.

Before I placed my lips on the string I felt it pound in my hand, like the beating of a heart. I knew Eric's heard did not beat, and yet still he lived. In my hand I could feel the evidence of that life, of his life.

How could he ever have doubted that he was a alive? He had brought me to life. Wasn't that enough proof?

Not thinking I moved to kiss the rose colored thread in my hand and when my lips touched it, I felt my skin tingle. I felt a small burst of energy pass into me, just like before, but it didn't overwhelm me. It just felt good.

He shivered beneath me, and I knew he felt it, too.

"It's like you 're touching my soul," he whispered reverently into my neck. Who fucking knew there were yet more ways to appreciate the man who held me now? Other ways to love him?

Gently, I released his rosy thread and watched it wrap itself around him again. Once I saw it safely settled back against his body I buried my face in his neck, zeroing in on that spot I knew made him just a little crazy. He raised me up slightly before pushing me down on his erection as his fangs sank into my neck and he tasted himself through me. I pressed myself down, careful not to disturb his fangs and moaned at the mix of sensations. When his hips rocked up into me in time with his pulling at the wound on my neck I was done. I came in his arms, moaning his name, head spinning on the high that was him.

I felt him lick my neck and then he removed our clothes so far it felt like I never even moved from his lap, but I know I did because next I felt him, all of him pressing into the wet heat of and I shivered all over, moaning.

I was still stoned as he slide me down on him, still tasting him, and he was tasting himself, too.

How long could we go on like this, I wondered? How long could he feed me, with me feeding him? How long before we devoured each other completely?

I shivered again. I wanted that. I didn't want that. I wanted to keep him safe, and I wanted to destroy him. I wanted him to destroy me, because nothing less than him was ever going to be enough.

His hand moved between us and he found the spot I needed with this fingers while he rocked into me hard and fast. He had not found release yet and his need was great, I could feel it along with him buried deep inside me. Thinking only of his pleasure, I imagined the beautiful rosy strings of his chi and leaned forward taking him deeper into me and whispered into his ear as he fucked me.

"You taste like strawberries, baby." That intimate whisper completely unzipped him in my arms, and he bellowed out his passion in his deep jazzy voice, I felt his release fill me inside and I hugged him even tighter.

32XXXXXXXXXXXX23

We showered and then went to work on the car for a bit. I was handing him a wrench, replaying our conversation from earlier and I realized suddenly that he had been afraid he was dead inside. That was why he had come apart in my arms when I told him he tasted like strawberries. I had been telling him that he was alive just as much as I was.

I felt my girly bits clench in want and need of remembering how alive he was.

I wanted to say something that would reassure him, as he would me in the same situation. I wanted to be as good to him as he was to me. I didn't know how yet though. Everything I thought of to say was lame. Setting it aside for now I moved on to the other thing that was on my mind.

"What do you suppose the common denominator is between the zombies at Valhalla?" I asked him.

"You mean aside from the fact that they work for me?" I stopped, gut clenching.

"You think this is someone trying to get at you?"

"I have to consider it." And now I did, too.

"Can you get me their personnel files? I want to see what else they have in common aside from their employer."

"I can, but, Jane, if someone is out to get me, the quickest way to do that is to get to you right now."

"Wh-what do you mean?"

"Well, you are a very valuable asset." That stung. I hadn't been expecting hearts and flowers, but I had next expected such a cold explanation either.

"Right," I answered. Not elaborating and not letting myself show just how much that fucking hurt. I supposed I was a valuable asset. I could see the future and sometimes I change it. I could kill an enemy in a completely untraceable way. Something in my tone must have caught his attention because when I turned away from him pretending to be reaching for another tool he appeared before me.

"You are a very valuable asset," he repeated looking down at me intently. "Quite irreplaceable," he added, his eyes still looking at me lost their focus as he was pulled into his own thoughts.

"I got it," I said and started to move away. He caught my hand.

"I don't think you do," he said. "You are a very valuable asset, and quite irreplaceable, but that is not what I meant when I said that getting to you would be the quickest way to get to me."

"Oh?" I was more interested than I was letting on, while inside I hung on his every word like my life depended on it.

"Oh," he said, smiling at me a little as looked down at me. "No one has tasted me for a very, very long time. And no one has EVER told me that I taste like strawberries." His tone conveyed the intimacy of that moment all over again and my breath caught in my throat as I remembered the feel of him letting go inside me.

"And," my voice cracked, I licked my lips and cleared my throat, trying again, "And that makes me more than a valuable asset?" He moved toward me then, a step closer, then another. His hand came up to touch my face softly, like a dream I had yet to dream. I heard the drums of his music again, and the steamy notes of almost saxophone overlay them.

"Oh, yes, my Jane. That makes you priceless."


	15. Control

_A/N-I just wanted to take moment here and thank all my readers who are still with me on this one. I appreciate your support for this story very much. I hope I manage to keep you all entertained and engaged as we move forward._

_We are going to take a jump in time now, Jane was learning about many things when we left off in the last chapter. It takes time to learn, but it's not necessarily the most exciting thing to follow step by step. I needed to give her some time to grow into her skills, pick up some new ones, and find the confidence that she would need to be of assistance to Eric in his dark and twisty vampire world._

_She is getting closer to learning what she is, and figuring out how that might help her as the mystery of what she calls zombies starts to unfold for her and Eric. I am looking very much forward to unfolding this tale for you in the coming chapters._

_Blessings to you all!_

**The Psychic- Control**

_Four months later…_

I walked across the garage to retrieve my throwing knives. Every time I picked them up, first from floor, then from the walls, and finally from the target I was aiming at I smiled and thought of the man who had given them to me. That is how I thought of him, as a man. I knew he was a vampire, and I knew that he had done terrible things. I knew that he was still capable of terrible things. I liked that about him, because I was quite sure that he would never ever do terrible things to me.

That made me special. It was feeling I had never had before, but one that I had come to appreciate very much.

I, too, had done terrible things. I could still do terrible things. I would never ever do terrible things to Eric. It made him special as well, and I also appreciated that very much.

"I have gift for you, my Jane," he had said a couple of months ago, and he presented me with the coolest and most wicked set of six silver throwing knives that I had ever seen. I still blushed when I remembered squealing like a little girl when I saw the shiny blades in the large black case he opened when he gave them to me. "Can I take that to mean that you are pleased?" His sexy smirk and eyebrow sent me into another adolescent tizzy.

So, I wasn't cool. He's probably already picked up on that by now. Supernatural senses and what not.

"YES!" I screamed snatching one out and looking around the garage for something to throw it at. My eyes landed on some left over lumber from the car frame he had constructed to hold the Corvette's shell. I took a deep breath, folded my body in my best imitation of a warrior I had seen in an old Bruce Lee movie and let out a HAYA, as I threw the knife. It bounced off the wood and fell to the floor. I jumped up and down anyway, still excited. "I will get better!" I tossed over my shoulder as I ran to get the knife and do it again. His laughter followed me across the garage.

"I am sure that you will, Jane." My insides still melted when he expressed his belief in me to be better than I was. He did it all the time, and while I was grateful for the support and reassurance I wondered if he was trying to make up for all the support I had been denied. No one had ever talked to me like he did. How could it be that I just moved him to do that, when I had never moved anyone like that before in my entire life?

"Come here," he motioned to me, and then pulled my back against his chest when I arrived at his side. "Knives are about balance, sweet Jane." Placing his large sensuous hands on my body, he molded himself to me. I relaxed in his grasp, letting his move me as he would to form the stance I needed to balance the throwing blade. "You must find your center of balance, and then practice holding on to that no matter what position your body is in." I took a deep breath, losing sight of the lesson at hand when I felt him so close to me. He chuckled again, leaning down to my ear.

"Balance is about more than the physical self, you must be able to maintain your focus when you are under…duress."

"D-duress?" I managed to get out as I thought of all the things those hands had done to me last night.

"Yes, remember your state of calm in meditation that you and Parker have been working on?" I managed to nod. "Find that place when I apply duress, and try and maintain your focus on hitting your target with knife."

I had managed to find it but lost it quickly when he started to let his hands roam again on my body. I wanted him. His large erection pressing into my back told me that he felt the same desire I did. Dropping the knife on the floor I turned in his arms and kissed him. He let me for a few minutes before pulling back, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear he spoke softly to me.

"You must learn control Jane." I started to pull back, embarrassed that I had done something wrong. Afraid that I had disappointed him. He refused to let me go. "No, you misunderstand. There is nothing wrong with feeling, Jane. With wanting me, or anything else. You did not allow yourself to feel anything for a very long time because of what happened to you. With me here you have awakened and you have become as beautiful inside as you are outside." I dropped my head again. I knew that I was not beautiful. He pulled my face back up and made me look him in the eye.

"You will hear me on this matter." I nodded stiffly, not wanting to disappoint him more. "You are still learning. First you had to learn to feel again. You did this well. Now, you must learn to not let those feelings control you. They good and necessary parts of you, and I cherish each of them, but they can get your hurt if you don't have control of them."

"But I do have control!" I insisted. "I have not hurt anyone else since the accident in the grocery store. I have worked on my mediation and learned how to explore my power. I know I still have a lot to learn about what I am and what I can do, but I do have control!" I stamped my foot in anger. He raised an eyebrow at me.

"Yes, I can see that." I raised a hand and wiped it across my cheek.

"You got some sarcasm on me there." A smirk spread across his face. At least I could still amuse him, even if I was failing at all the other stuff.

"You are amazing, Jane. Don't think that because you have new challenges that you are failing in any way." Was a freaking mind reader now? "New challenges mean that you achieved your goals where you are and it is time to add to you successes."

"Spoken like a true Viking. That why you guys were slogging across the Atlantic discovering North America before anyone else?"

"Yes, or rather, as you say, 'Damn Skippy'," I giggled. Teaching a thousand year old Viking slang was one of the many bonuses of being Eric Northman's protégé. "I know that our investigation into the 'zombies' has stalled out, but what if it hadn't? What if, as we had supposed, the person behind this was out to get me?" Rage filled me instantly.

"I would have fucking killed them!" I swore fiercely. I would let nothing happen to Eric Northman. EVER.

"You would have run into some situation ruled by your feelings for me and gotten yourself hurt or killed." His words were stern but I see the warmth and appreciation in his eyes. He was worried about me. Our investigation and review of the zombie's personnel files had turned up bupkiss, but I had not let it go. I was still looking for information every day in the papers and in every stranger I bumped into. So far nothing. But I did have an idea that I wanted to run past him. But now was not the time to bring that up. He was in full on Master/Grasshopper mode right now. The only way I was going to get him to listen to me was to show that I was listening to him.

It was annoying, but it was also right. I wanted to be partner. An equal, in as much as that could be possible between us. I would not bitch when he was giving me what I wanted.

"Maybe," I conceded grudgingly. "I would lose my shit if anything happened to you, Eric." I was clutching his arms now, running from the images my mind was conjuring of what my life would be like without this amazing being standing here holding me in his arms.

"Precisely my point. There is no way you could know this, Jane, but I have let you into my life further than most have ever been. If something were to happen to me, I would be counting on your assistance, and if you are a messy emotional dervish, I will not be able to count on your assistance and support." I blinked. He was right. I could make rash promises and stamp my foot all day, but if I didn't have the ability to back it up and he got into trouble I would be useless. I wouldn't be able to save him, not when he needed me.

"I am your Grasshopper. Teach me." And he did.

32XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX23

Now, four months after entering Wonderland, I was back at the starting point in the garage, knives back in the black leather harness that wrapped my body, ready to practice some more. I wanted to be lethal with these babies. I wanted to make him proud of me. I turned my back on the target and centered myself, finding my balance. Taking a deep breath and finding my focus. I visualized that Eric was being held by another vampire unable to free himself. He was counting on me. I turned, drawing my blades as I dropped low to the floor and fired at the target while moving toward it as fast I could.

My workouts with Parker and my change in diet to recognize my true needs had led to me dropping thirty pounds since I had met Eric. My muscles were stronger, my body more lithe and responsive to the scenario I imagined before. I was good, but I still needed to be better. I was starting to get some ideas about how I could make that happen. I was starting to feel brave enough to try some of those ideas.

As I dodge imaginary foes and threw knives as I ran to save Eric I planted all six of my knives dead center in the bulls eyes of my throwing board. You've come a long way, baby, I thought to myself, as I pulled them out and harnessed them to do it all over again. When I turned I saw him standing in the doorway that led back into our house. He had been away two night on vampire business and I missed him a great deal. My first impulse was to run to him, I wanted him in my arms.

I curbed that impulse and stood there, across the garage and waited for him to make the first move. He stood motionless a moment and stared at me and then with blurry speed he was in front of me.

"Miss me?" A girl could only take so much and that was my limit.

"You better believe it!" I launched myself into his arms and felt him spin me as soon as my feet left the floor. He was laughing and so I knew he was teasing.

"What happened to your control, Grasshopper?"

"I blame you. You come in here looking all sexy after being gone for two nights and then you vampire your way over here and ask me to emote for you. What did you think was going to happen?!" He answered me with a kiss, cutting off his laugh and my fake indignant reaction at his gentle chastising. My eyes were crossed when he stopped kissing me, but I had honed my skills with him over the past months. I refused to surrender without a fight.

"Ohhh, so THAT is what you thought was going to happen? I'll remember it for next time." I snuggled into his body. "I hope next time is a long time away." He kissed the top of my head and hugged me tighter to him.

"You are much improved with the knives and the controlling of your emotions. I am very proud of you." I wanted to squeal again, like I had when he had given me the knives but I managed to be cool, well cooler than I wanted to be anyway.

"Think so, huh?"

"Oh, yes. I could hear your heart pick up when you saw me. Pulse pounding, muscles that reflexively wanted to bring you to my side. You concealed you reaction well, dearest."

"So, I guess now you are going to tell me that I have to learn how to make my heart stop beating when I see you?" He raised a hand a wiped his cheek.

"You got some sarcasm on me there."

"I may not have been the best influence on you." He threw his head back and laughed, shaking me in his arms.

"Perhaps," was all he said and then his eyes came to focus on my lips. I wanted that kiss more than he could have imagined, but I valued his words from months before. I still needed to improve. Before his lips could touch mine I asked him what I had thought of moments before he arrived.

"I need to be better. Will you help me?" He frowned slightly. "I mean I need to be faster. You gave me these silver knives in case I had to fight a vampire. You said silver was deadly to them, right?"

"Yes."

"You are so much faster than me, I need to see if I can improve my speed."

"How?"

"How do you get faster?"

"You want to feed and see if you can channel that energy into being able to move faster."

"No flies on you."

"Thank you, Maddie Hayes." He still wasn't over the all night Moonlighting marathon I had made him watch. I had every episode recorded on VHS. He never came out and admitted it but I think he was jealous of my crush on Bruce Willis. Of course, I am sure it wasn't helped by me insisting that I sing with Bruce about Seagram's Golden Wine Coolers on each commercial break.

"Thank you," I smiled at him glowing. He knew that Maddie was a hero of mine. She had lost everything, but she refused to give up. She took what she had left and made a life for herself. I was doing the same. I even had my own sexy leading man to spar with. I sighed a girly sigh inside, rather than let Eric hear it. I didn't want him to misunderstand that it was HIM that made my heart go boom, not the former bartender from Hell's Kitchen.

"So, will you help me?"

32XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX23

Over the past four months Eric and I had explored my feeding from him and I felt that I had good control, and knew how to do it without impacting him negatively at all. But that was when I was taking just enough to feed the hunger that came on me every three to four days. Tonight I might need to go a little deeper. I explained that I wanted to start out at the usual level and see if I could channel that, and if the result was not satisfactory I might want to take a little more.

"After the test I want to feed you," I said, pressing myself into his chest.

"Oh?"

"Yes. I want to show you how much I missed you." I kissed him then, and caressed him through his pants, overjoyed that he seemed to have missed me just as much. Oh, fuck I needed to focus. FOCUS!

"Proceed." There was a slight tremor in his voice that traveled straight to ache between my thighs. Maybe we should do this later and get on with the welcome home. "Proceed," he said again, sensing my hesitation. I took a breath and nodded determined to be a good Grasshopper.

I opened my mind and focused on his threads of energy. They wound around his large frame like vines, pulsing with his life force. I pressed closer to him reaching for the one that circled his right arm and wound around his long graceful neck. I called it me and it left him and came to rest in my hand, gently I touched it my lips, kissing it softly and with all the reverence that I felt for the man it belonged to. He moaned softly in my arms and my taste buds flooded with strawberries as it did every time I tasted him. A moment later I was struck with the raw energy that was Eric Northman.

It was overpowering and pure sensuality. Usually, I channeled that into sex with him. Focused on pleasing us both but this time I tried to direct to some place other than my libido. It was not easy, but I directed it to my arms and legs, focusing on the muscles that I could now feel from hours of running of working out under the watchful eye of my Were trainer. I felt very strong and powerful.

Returning the thread to his neck I stepped back, and allowed myself a moment to appreciate the dreamy blissful look on my lovers face. Later, I promised myself and moved back to my starting position, again imagining him under attack. This time my throws and movements were faster, focused, and much more powerful. Normally, the knives went into the cork board bulls eye about an inch, but this time as I threw, dodged and moved they went in up their hilts, and I was standing beside the board when the last one hit, watching it sink in almost in slow motion.

I stopped there, staring at the board and tried to process what had just happened. I felt his arms come around me from behind and felt his breath in my ear.

"I would call that a success," he said kissing my neck.

"Yeah," I mumbled, trying to remember each move I had made and found it all a blur in my memory. "How fast was I?"

"Not quite vampire fast, but much faster than you were earlier." I thought about that.

"That means that more energy would make me faster still."

"Seems likely." That was good to know. "You want to take more and try again?"

"Not tonight," I turned to face him. "I need to process this some first."

"Are you ok?"

"Yeah, I'm fine physically, but…"

"But…?"

"It felt, different."

"Different how?" I struggled to explain.

"I had not tried to direct it before. It's like up to now I have been doing surgery with a sledge hammer, and someone just handed me a scalpel." He thought that over for a moment.

"You mean it was more controlled and precise."

"Yes, exactly."

"So you think that you could bring the focus in even tighter?"

"Yes, and maybe in more ways than one."

"How else?"

"Certain emotions make us more powerful. Anger, fear, these increase adrenaline and other chemicals in the body. If I can direct how to use the energy then perhaps I can direct the energy that I take as well." Again, he paused to think that over.

"But what would happen if you did?" I just looked at him, because we both knew that there was only one way to find out the answer that question.


	16. The Corner of Fucked Up & Just Plain Wrg

_A/N- Thank you all for continuing to read and comment. I find great satisfaction in the love and even some in even the most negative of comments. _

_I do need to clarify though, Jane is NOT drinking Eric's blood. At this point in the story the only exposure she has had to his blood is him rubbing it on her stitches to heal them after her accident and to heal his bite marks. _

_She feeds on chi, his life force, not his blood. It is one of the things they don't understand yet because technically he is dead, and so he expected to be like what they are currently calling "zombies", but he is not. His chi tastes like strawberries to her, and it is very pleasurable to him when she feeds from his life energy._

_I do not know yet if Eric cares enough for Jane to give her his blood. Time will tell._

**The Psychic- The Corner of Fucked Up & Just Plain Wrong**

I was sitting in the park, soaking up the sun, and replaying the welcome home that I had given Eric the night before in my mind. I enjoyed thinking about the things we did almost as much as I did actually doing them. He was amazing in every way.

I had just gotten to the part where he bent me over the door of the car frame and knelt down behind me to kiss his way up my legs when someone plopped down beside me on the bench and disturbed not only my memory but the coffee I had been holding loosely in my grip.

Biting back a swear word I looked up and saw a young man that I did not recognize looking at me with a devil my care smile on his face. "Hello, Jane," he said softly, wickedly, like I was something he knew intimately. I was discombobulated from the disturbance of my fantasizing and my coffee spillage so I went from relaxed reptile in the sun to bitchzilla in two point five.

"WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU?" He laughed. That didn't help.

"Oh, come now. You know me. Look at me." I looked. He was no older than his mid-twenties, auburn hair, grey blue eyes, and wearing a green button down, black jeans with sneakers. I had never seen this guy before. He cut me off before I could say anything.

"Look at ME, not this meat bag I am wearing. Use your true eyes."

So, this was happening. He knew I was more than plain Jane, and I knew nothing.

I opened my mind and saw something that I had never seen before. The Threads of Possibilities that I saw with everyone except the 'zombies', the threads that I drank from with Eric and Mark Rowsey, the threads that usually reached out flowing into possible choices and actions moving like they were alive, and allowed me to follow them into the potential events that they were connected to were just….hanging there.

They dangled from the body of the boy before me, limp, lifeless, and unconnected to any future possibilities. I could see a dim glow of chi, but underneath that, was…something else. I could see a shadow, inside this boy, shifting around inside the outline of his body as though made of smoke and held together by the, to use his term, 'meat sack' before me.

_This is where you run._

Ah, good. There was a monster invading my personal space, spilling my coffee aaaaaannnnnnd the voices were back in my head.

_Par for the course_, David Addison sounded off in my head.

If I had been raised as girl who was inundated and surrounded by normal and average events, my brain would have probably melted right there. Instead, I had been raised in a seven floor walkup, two bedroom apartment on the corner of Fucked Up and Just Plain Wrong, so THIS situation, I could handle.

I knew that now, thanks to Eric. Maybe I had done all the heavy lifting myself, just as he had told me I would when we met, but I had been right, too. He inspired me to _want_ to do it. Despite staring this new flavor of crazy in the eye my insides went a little warm and gooey when the image of the Viking passed through my mind.

Doing him proud, I raised my eyebrow up, placed my _'I'm so fucking bored right now I could pass out mask'_ on my face and leaned back, away from the whatever the hell that was now invading my personal space.

_Loa_, the voice in my head went off again_. Onire, Ire-Ekiti, Ogun, Warrior_.

Warrior, ok, I go the last one at least, but I felt a slight tingle at Ogun as well. I felt like part of me knew it even if that part was holding its tongue right now. Then, just like when I had met Eric for the first time, I felt my vision narrow and take on red tinged haze. I could feel myself talking, and I understood the words I was using, but it wasn't ME saying them.

Something inside me, the same something that had told Eric I was a vampire, and had let him see how I tasted the world that first night, some slumbering beast that knew more about me than I did, turned over and rubbed its eyes.

Awakening.

I was raised on the corner of Fucked Up and Just Plain Wrong. I can handle this.

That was when the back of my skull started vibrating, and my lips started moving.

"Loa," My lips said, tipping my head in acknowledgement for the entity that stood before me.

"Spirit Child," the Loa said, nodding respectfully in return. Every day Jane, non skull vibrating Jane, went ballistic at her naming. I realized then that my skull vibrated that way because the voices in my head had turned me inside out. What was inside was now out and I was trapped. I was the voice in its mind now.

Spirit Child.

Corner of Fucked up and Just Plain Wrong. Still good? Deep mental breath. Yep, still good.

_Be calm_, my inner Eric whispered in my ear_. Center yourself. Take advantage of this to listen. Learn what you can. You must rule the fear. When the fear rules you that is death. Be brave, my Jane._

Right. I can do this.

"The balance between this world and the spirit world has been disturbed, Spirit Child. Know you the reason for this."

"I believe it has to do with the walking dead that I have seen here."

"Explain."

"They have no life force, they have no futures, yet they appear on the outside to be normal. Something has stolen their lives and their futures away and hidden them in plain sight."

"Who else knows of this?"

"Just E-…just me." Bitch you are NOT dragging him into this. He's been good to us! You will not betray him to this Loa thingy.

"Have you found the source of this poison yet?" I shook my head, making the bitch in the driver's seat shut the fuck up. It wasn't hard though, that side of me, that part of her, however all this went, also held affection for my vampire.

"I had not planned to approach you this way. You were on your path at last, and picking up the pieces that would lead you to your own true face. I regret that this situation has by force sped up that process." I felt myself nod.

"Yes, my journey is only beginning. Still, we serve the balance. We maintain the flow."

"From the beginning of the river to its end," the Loa finished. Saying those words brought an unexpected sense of comfort to me. I had never said them before, but I could remember saying them thousands of times like prayers at bedtime.

"Contact me when you have information."

"I know how to do this?"

"You will remember when you need to know." He stood then, this strange young boy and moved to the bench next to mine before resuming his seat. I watched him shimmy and jerk slightly and then at the same time I saw the dark form crouching inside him disappear and his Threads of Possibility reconnected with the Universe, flowing and singing.

I reached out with my mind and followed one to where he was meeting his friends later for drinks and movie.

Perfectly, absolutely, boring and normal.

As for me, my skull stopped vibrating, my vision returned to normal and the other me, the Spirit Child me, went back to sleep.

_No, not sleeping. I am waiting_.

Waiting for fucking what? I shouted down into the dark place inside me where this me lived. Waiting for what?

_Until we find the source._

Yeah, well, good fucking luck with that.

_You look but you don't see. Go back and look at the personnel files again. The Universe is about balance. The Universe wants balance. We, the Loa, are the agents of that balance. Providence will be on our side. We must be vigilant in our watch for it._

The Loa may be agents of Providence, but I am not Loa. I am a Spirit Child!

_That argument might impress me more if you knew what either of those things were._

So explain it to me.

I waited but silence reigned. Apparently, I would not be talking to '_myself' _anymore until I did as I was told. I clenched my hands and tried very, very hard not to scream like a three year old. I blamed the adrenaline and the confusion.

Both of those were words designed to obfuscate the truth.

I was absolutely terrified.

I was also excited. Finally, some information, some answers, something I could use to figure out what the hell I was, and how I could use that to better myself and help my beautiful Eric.

32XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX23

I slipped into my closet with Eric just as the sun was setting. It was a tight fit, but I wanted to be near him as soon as possible. I needed to feel him close.

I had spent the rest of my day researching and trying to figure out the things I supposedly already knew. Trying to see what I had looked at but not seen. My head was spinning and my heart was pounding. I needed my anchor. I needed Eric.

The back of the closet gave way to a small area that was light tight and allowed him just a enough space to stretch out his large frame, or sit and not hit his head on the ceiling of the space. I crawled in and put my arms around him, resting my head on his chest, my legs twined with his. I knew he was awake when I felt his arms come up around me and squeeze me gently.

"Everything, ok?" he asked quietly. I had never been with him like this when he awoke before.

Was everything ok?

Yes?

No?

Maybe?

Who the hell knows?

I held him tighter and did not speak for several long minutes. When I did begin to speak I would speak of Provenance and Providence and I would try to connect the dots of what I was to what I saw and how that mattered to me and to him.

I had not figured most of that out, but I suspected that once my skull started vibrating again, I would remember the things I knew and the words would come. Their meanings would follow, and this simple time of me and the vampire I loved would change.

Irrevocably.

"I found out some stuff today," I whispered into his chest, holding him tighter to me with my arms and legs, burrowing as close as I could get.

"Do you want to tell me?" his hand came up to cup the back of my head.

"Not yet. I just want to stay here like this for a little while. Is that ok?"

"Yes, that is fine." He kissed the top of head softly and I tried to remember a time when I did not have, did not want him. Everything beyond this time with Eric was fuzzy and out of focus.

It got _real_ when I found Eric Northman.

_I_ got real when I found Eric Northman.

_The Viking's path is not your path._

It had been months since I had heard that. Now I knew who said it. I knew why I hated hearing it. I knew with absolute certainty that it meant that sooner or later we would be parted.

I just held on tighter and refused to let my tears fall and my heart break. It was a small space and I knew he would have heard that crack if I let it happen.

He had taught me to feel, and to not be ruled by it. He had taught me to sink my 'fangs' into each moment of passion and joy and suck it dry. He had taught me more than I could ever thank him for, even if I had a thousand years.

_You may not be able to stop a thing from happening, but you can control how you react to it, how you let it affect you._

More Eric wisdom.

I held him tighter still, glad that he didn't need to breathe.

"I was in the park this morning and I met a Loa." I stopped, waiting to see what he would say.

"What colors was he dressed in?" I smiled into his chest.

"Green shirt, black jeans."

"Ogun." The sexiest fucking man on the planet and he had a brain to match. Love, love, love this man!

"That's what he said, or rather what I said when I saw him." He continued stroking my hair. I knew he caught the implications of my phrasing.

"What else was said?"

"Ogun wanted to know if I knew who had upset the balance. I told him it was the zombies. I told him I was the only one who had noticed. The only one who knew."

"Why are the Loa interested in you, my Jane?"

"Because, somehow I am one of them…or related to them, maybe? Ogun called me 'Spirt Child." Eric jerked beneath me. He knew something about that then apparently and it didn't seem to make him the happiest vampire this world had ever seen.

"Eric?"

"I thought it was a myth," he whispered in the dark, holding me tighter now. Unfortunately, I did need to breathe. "I never dreamed that you were this." He hesitated a moment and then holding me close. I felt the world shift beneath us and I was glad that in that light tight cubby the world could only be so big.


	17. A Loa By Any Other Name

**The Psychic- A Loa By Any Other Name**

"The Loa are spirits associated specifically with Voodoo in our modern culture. They have many names, _Mystères_ or _Invisibles_. In Voodoo these spirits serve as intermediaries between _Bondye_ or The Good God—the Creator, who is distant from the world—and humanity.

"In the beginning these Loa were unlike saints or angels because you did not pray to them, you served them.

"They were each distinct beings with their own personal likes and dislikes, distinct sacred rhythms, songs, dances, ritual symbols, and special modes of service. Contrary to popular belief, the Loa are not deities in and of themselves; they are intermediaries for a distant Bondye."

I shifted closer to him then, watching his face in the shadows as he spoke, seeing the story play out in my mind. I felt like I had heard it before. I twined my legs back with his, and held him close, afraid that this ride would get bumpy before it was over.

"We in the supernatural world learn two very important things early on. Most mysticism and religion has some basis in truth. The basis of truths are all but a rose by any other name." I snorted.

"You're a thousand years old. What did you say before Shakespeare came along?"

"That 'my god can beat up your god' in the beginning." In the dim lamp light that filtered in from the bedroom outside the cubby I saw him flash me his brightest most devastating smile. I was ready to fall down and worship him as he continued. "Progressing to 'I believe in no god' as I aged in my vampire existence."

"And now?"

"Now I have walked far enough to see that when we look at a thing still and always we often only see what we want to see, which is why when you say Loa and I might say Archangel, or Saint, or any number of other labels pulled from a vast myriad of beliefs and religions, some long dead, some flourishing still, some struggling under the pain of birth even as we speak.

"My Jane, when you are confronted with a truth that has many faces, start with what is consistent among them, and build out from there. I assume, my beautiful girl you have been learning of Loa today?"

"Just like you taught me, Master." He smiled and kissed my forehead.

"Grasshopper," he whispered adoringly as he looked deeply into my eyes.

"In your studies did you find one called _'Marassa Jumeaux'?" _I nodded, and picked up from there.

"They are the divine twins. They often appear as children, but more ancient than any other Loa. They embody love, truth and justice, directed by reason. They are also called The Children of Mysteries.

"The _Marassa_ are somewhat different from standard Loa, they are twins, and yet they number three. They are male and female, and both male and both female." He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. I leaned into his cool hand, as always seeking to be closer as he pressed me to see what I had truly learned in my research. I smiled smugly inside, I would not disappoint him.

"You know then that in an effort to 'civilize' and 'enlighten' the slaves of Louisiana, Catholicism worked to overlay their own beliefs on _Marassa Jumeaux_ making them synonymous with a the saints _Cosmas and Damian_?"

"Yes, I saw that today as well. Cosmas and Damian were twins, tortured to recant heresy but who refused to give in. They became saints in the fourteenth century.

"It went on to say that saints are often prayed to for invention and assistance, this is not unlike the Loa who serve as intermediaries between _Bondye, _the Creator, and humanity. Someone saw this, and connected them through their similarity. Thus one thing could become another." Instead of complimenting me he grew still and quiet for a moment his eyes far away in thought. When he spoke his voice was distant.

"I often wonder if in trying to take one thing away from one group, we are not giving up something ourselves as well."

"What do you mean?"

"Well if Cosmas and Damian can be _Marassa Jumeaux_, then _Marassa Jumeaux_ can be Cosmas and Damian." I thought about that for a minute.

"So, why does that matter?" He chuckled, coming all the way back to me.

"You, Jane Black, who feeds on the life force energy itself can ask me this with a straight face?" I was confused. "Stop thinking so one dimensionally about this, bring it down to plainer terms that the mystery might reveal itself."

I was still lost.

"If every day I get ten pieces of silver addressed to me, and you get ten pieces of silver addressed to you, what happens if I change my name to something else and contact the folks sending the silver and say, please send all of Jane's silver and Eric's silver to this new person over here." Starting to get it but still not sure I looked at him.

"What is prayer, Jane?"

"Directed life energy," came my immediate answer. I knew that, and then like a light going on I understood it and what he was trying to say.

"Loa feed on life energy."

"Many things feed on life energy. You could argue that I feed on life energy, just through blood." I nodded.

"Prayers directed to _Marassa Jumeaux_ would now be going to Cosmas and Damian. Directed energy would now be going to Cosmas and Damian. So…if _Marassa Jumeaux_ wanted to feed, it would need to merge with or steal from Cosmas and Damian." Now I fell quiet and thoughtful for a moment.

"Is that all there is, Eric?"

"What do you mean?"

"Out there in the dark and places in between. Is all there is out there one thing trying to devour another until there is nothing left?"

"Perhaps. Truthfully, I do not know. I would not be surprised. This life has taught me that survival often comes down to eat or be eaten." He stopped there, slipping off into his ancient thoughts again. I took few moments to process as well before going on.

_The Viking's path is not your path._

Instinctively, I tried to get closer. Wordlessly denying _this_ voice in my head, _some _voice in my head, _my_ voice in my head. I thought of what I hadn't told him yet and suddenly, I wanted to hold off as long as I could. I needed to feel something other than the dark that was not gnawing at me from within and without.

I had grown up too soon.

I learned today there still more up to grow into. It was unsettling.

I needed it to slow down, just for a moment.

"There is more, isn't there, Grasshopper."

"Yes," I answered quietly.

"Will you tell me?"

"Everything. Always."

"Now?"

"Later."

"And now?"

"Now I need to know that no matter what else I am, I am still _your_ Jane Black." He pulled me closer and turned us over so that his lips were hovering above mine.

"Always," and he kissed me like I wanted to be kissed. Eric and I had made love many times since that first night when I had been crippled with over worked muscles. I had learned what I like and what I needed as well as what he liked and what he needed. If my time was truly limited in this place with him I wanted to push that knowledge away and be with him, completely with him for every moment that we had left. "Are you hungry?" he whispered in my ear, sending shivers over my body.

"No," I answered kissing his neck in return. Worshipping his cool skin and beautiful soul with my lips and tongue while my hands made a pilgrimage across the continent of his flesh. "I want to take care of you, as you do me." I came to his lips again, and looked into his eyes. "I want to love you as you do me." He had never said that he loved me in words, but I felt it in his every action. "Is there time for me to love you tonight, Eric? Is there time for me to just be your Jane?"

He growled in his chest, almost a purr, a sound he made when I pleased him most extraordinarily. My body responded and I felt the slickness between my legs grow into a puddle. He made that sound just before he came, at the peak of his pleasure, just before he let go. Sensing the yes in that sound, I turned him over onto his back and slowly started to remove his clothing, with reverence. I was touching something holy to me now. I was touching the man I loved above all things.

We were still in his sleeping space, and I thought for a moment of moving out to the more spacious bed, just a few feet away, but I pushed that that away, too. He felt safe here, and so I did, too. There wasn't much room to maneuver, but the cocoon effect of the tiny space made me feel not only safer but closer to him. Where we were did not matter to me, what mattered was that we were together.

When I had undressed him I sat and looked at him in the dim light that was coming in through the open cubby door. There were no words, and the look on his face took my breath away. I could see love in him then and while I had spoken recklessly and assumed his feelings for me, he had not denied them, or corrected me.

Holding his gaze I slipped out of my clothes as well, and then moved to straddle his legs. He was very aroused and I reached out to pump his shaft slowly, reveling in the way his fangs dropped down and his eyes rolled shut at my touch. There was no greater power to want or have than this.

I leaned down and took him into my mouth, going slowly, partly to accommodate his girth comfortably for us both, and partly because I wanted to savor the sensation. The fluid that had been seeping out of his tip pooled on my tongue inflaming my taste buds. Not strawberries like his energy, like his soul, but better in some way. The secret of him making it so.

His hips started to thrust slightly, as he sought to get deeper into the warmth of my mouth and my moan echoed his, my body growing ever more ready to take him, but I was not in a rush. My immortal lover was magnificent beyond words, I had seen him come and stay hard for hours, pleasuring me until I lost consciousness. I need not worry if he let himself go now. There was time for all things.

Taking a deep breath I pushed down closer to the bottom of his shaft, stroking the underside of him with my tongue wantonly as I pulled up. His hands came to rest in my hair, not pressing me back down, rather stroking me, and showing me how much I pleased him. I started bobbing my head, increasing the suction begging him to let go. His hands left my hair and came down to cup my breasts, his thumbs torturing my nipples, raising my own desire until I was almost as out of control as he was.

I looked up and found his eyes locked on mine. I begged him to let go with my eyes and I felt him grow in my mouth just seconds before he let me drink him down. Next to his chi nothing had never tasted so fucking good. He twisted my nipples hard as he emptied into me and that sensation combined with his moan of intense pleasure racked my body with need. My muscles clenched in my abdomen and I felt like I would not be able to stand it if I didn't have him buried inside me right now. I moaned around his shaft as desire for him ripped through me and I felt him respond to my sounds as I had to his. He was still hard, when I released him with a loud pop, my hips thrusting against his legs, seeking what I wanted mindlessly.

As soon as I released him he sat up and turned me around pulling my back to his chest in the tight space, his arms coming around me to cup my breasts in his palms. "So beautiful," he whispered against my neck as I shifted my hips, seeking to line him up with my entrance.

"I want you to drink, Eric," I managed to say as I felt him start to slide into me where I needed him most. He grunted in answer and stilled my hips with his hands. I wanted to move but he would not let me. He raised his hands again to move my hair to the right side of my neck so he could bury his face in my neck, rubbing his face there, marking my skin. Then his right hand reached down and found the place where we were joined, creating a new sense of need as his fingers explored my hot wet folds that were stretched around him, covering him in the evidence of my need to be one with him like this.

Then, still not moving, still not letting me move, he found my pleasure center and started to rub in slow counter clockwise circles. My head fell back onto his shoulder and I tried to move again, but his left hand held me still. I stopped trying to do anything then and surrendered to him.

Just when I got to edge of pleasure he would stop, and without removing his fingers he would start moving in clockwise circles. The change in sensation was enough to delay my orgasm, but it would quickly build back up from the pressure of his fingers and the pleasure of him inside me.

"I can feel you trembling inside," he whispered savagely in my ear. Almost sounding angry his voice was so filled with need and restraint. "You want to come for me, don't you?" My body jerked in his arms. I was a bundle of raw nerves, exposed and needy. He changed direction again and I choked as I tried not to sob from all the emotion stampeding through me.

"Tell me," he commanded.

"Yes! Fuck yes! Please don't stop again!"

"Feel how I stretch you to fit me," he ground out. His jaws were clenched tight, his body hard as steel beneath me, inside me. "Feel me, Jane." When he said my name he pressed harder against my sensitive flesh and I came apart in his arms from his words as much as his actions. He owned me in that moment, in every moment. He had made me his. The feeling was exquisite.

As I clenched his cock with my orgasm he bellowed in my ear. Fighting to hold on as my body did its best to take him with me. "FUCK! You feel so good!" his cries filled the space around us as I came again and again, squeezing him inside me until the pleasure became too much and I too cried out.

"Love you, Eric. Love you so much!"

When I started to come down from this bliss of his touch the first thing I felt was him still rock hard buried to the hilt inside me and his body was trembling beneath me, still needing release. When I started to move this time, rising slowly only to come back down and work him into deeper still, he did not try and stop me. Instead he started pulling me down harder against him, while he was thrusting up into me. In a few strokes I was on the edge again. My lover had taught me well on many nights the power of words and I used that power with him now.

"Feel me, Eric," I said as I came down him, hard, so hard it hurt just a little, but that only made me want more. "Feel what you do to me, how wet I am for you. Feel how much I want you! You do that to me, Eric. Only you." He thrust harder and I felt him start to swell again, stretching me even more and my body responded, my pleasure pushing out of my lips in the form of his name over and over again.

I felt him at my neck again and just as his fangs slid in I came down hard and squeezed him as tight as I could demanding that he let go. When he pulled at the wounds on my neck I came for him again, and he moaned as he finally let go as well. Then there was only dark waves of pleasure when the lights went out for me.

When I came to, I was on my back with him hovering above me, his face buried still in my neck. I could feel his cool tongue licking the wounds closed that he had made and I felt myself shiver in want and need again.

Responding he slipped between my legs and into my welcoming body again, moving slowly this time. He pulled my legs up to rest on his shoulders as he swiveled his hips, pounding me in a rhythm that threatened to take my mind again. He could have it. My mind, my heart, my soul. Whatever he wanted, whatever he needed. That was all that mattered.

Slowly he wound me up again, and just as I was about to fall over the edge from his brutal tenderness he looked into my eyes and smiled slightly. My breath caught as I reached the edge of bliss one last time. "How do you always know what I need, Jane?"

I came before I could answer him, but I think words weren't necessary. I knew what he needed because I needed it, too. It was just that simple. It was just that complicated.

He kissed me with his secret soul and told me what he wanted and needed in a language that I understood. I was his. I could want or do nothing more than take care of him as he had taken care of me since the night we met.


End file.
